@@ermanbumaguin8063 You have no idea how hilarious it looks to see a guy draped in an Israeli flag that clearly hates PoC because you don't like "woke" things....using the terminology "goofy". Y'all love the shit we create and have no shame in taking it, but make excuses all day to hate us. Gotta love cognitive dissonance🤣
I'm glad someone is actually looking at the game with a cool head. It's still not a game I would play as I'm not into this genre at all, but seeing a take from someone who appears to not be invested in this culture war bullshit is appreciated.
I also gave it a chance, but even past the gut reaction and wake woke aspects I still found it very poorly written, thematically confused, and nonsensical, as if no one had edited the script. The characters are unlikeable save for Theo and the veteran that joins later on, with the cast getting so bloated that it's hard to get invested in anyone after a while. Other games with big casts tend to give every character a time to shine (even if they become background decorations after that, unfortunately common in jrpgs), but in this case we're constantly told, not shown about Eli being this and that, Ophelia feels like a plot device with 0 personality, Nai Nai is... honestly a disgrace to humanity all around, the little girl is a nothing plot device, etc. The music is frankly terrible, which is weird in a game that puts so much focus into it. I've met middle school kids with better compositions that whoever came up with... that. The last song is especially atrocious. I had to mute it whenever it came on because I couldn't handle the secondhand embarrassment. The "best" one is the first one, which by the way includes lyrics about newborns and pr0n back to back. I agree that criticism shouldn't be based off perceived politics, and wahh wahh woke brainrot helps no one and does nothing, but the same goes for the other side. We shouldn't consider something good because it has diversity or an alleged good message, which this game also fails at, by the way. Not only is the protagonist ANOTHER angry black woman criminal raised by a single mom, but her sister is ANOTHER nerdy Asian girl with dyed short hair and multicolored streaks who likes robots and math, but is also brash and emotionally stunted. There's also the Mexican immigrant who randomly speaks in (machine translated) Spanish and the other major black character who is ANOTHER criminal, uneducated and ignorant. That's why this isn't real diversity. It's barely any better than racist cartoons from the other side... you know, it's almost like both extremes are mirror images of each other. Terrible game + terrible presentation + terrible marketing + terrible response to criticism = easy target. It is what it is. At least they got EU money that could've been used to feed the homeless for months. Yay for equality!
It would never have gone to the homeless. It would have gone to the pockets of the CEOs who bankroll alt-right narratives, lies and distractions. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them made money shorting the related companies and indecies.
I have no interest in this game but your review was so well measured and communicated that I gladly sat through it all and at least tried to consider why my initial rraction was so hostile. Thanks for an awesome upload
I can't really connect to PAX. Too me she comes over as EVIL. Not as “She has to because.” NO! Her actions are EVIL I know she has her reasons, but the ACTIONS she does are horrible. This game has potential, but so do most games. And not every game requires to be made for the average target audience. But the target audience for this game is TINY. That doesn’t help with SELLING this game. I think the only “good” here is that the developer already made their money through grants so who cares. This game wasn’t made for 99% of the audience. So, 99% of the audience pointing and laughing can be expected. Oh well, I am sure they will make another game. I just hope that there are characters I would CARE about.
I think one of the biggest weaknesses of the game is that it takes like 2 or 3 hours to get an idea of the characters on a deeper level. They really do have depth (in my opinion), but it’s really something that takes a while to come to fruition.
It’s just driving me a little nuts that you’re spending more time talking about the people who didn’t like the game rather than why you actually liked the game
I'm not going to try this game because it doesn't look like something I'd enjoy very much, but I commend you for releasing, this uh... "narrative free" review.
i think the biggest problem of this game is that it was poorly written and voice acted. it's atrocious. and the way it approaches politics is embarassing. Look at Disco Elysium, the best political CRPG ever made, an absolute masterpiece, it's properly "woke" in a good and tasteful way, it's thought provoking and it's way more fun and engaging than this crap. Politics and social commentary in videogames always been a thing since the 90s. Games like Deus Ex, Fallout (especially New Vegas) and Metal Gear Solid are great examples of that, they all tackle politics without being cringe. Just watch that video "The Most Profound Moment in Gaming History" about MGS2, it's genius what Kojima did in 2001. These lame "woke" devs should take notes about how to write a good politically charged videogame.
Fair points! Personally, I liked the writing and voice acting, but it was very heavy handed in some ways that I think distracted from the stronger points in the writing. Disco Elysium is on another level though, it’s for sure one of the best games I’ve ever experienced.
@itneverbegan738 Thank you, well said. As someone who's loved Fallout (and who even had the patience to see FO76 evolve into something fun despite it's dreadful launch) I don't have anything against politics in games -- _IF_ it's well written AND well acted. But I just couldn't get past the sledgehammer-style of Dustborn's writing, coupled with what felt like stilted/awkward voice acting for many of the characters; and that's sad, because the devs are definitely capable of better games.
The game definitely isn't for me. I watched your video on your experience with it, watched a full gameplay of it, and tried out the demo and can say it's not something I'll be happy spending $30 on. That said, it's nowhere near as bad as everyone says it is. It definitely does have elements of what people are complaining about, but there's a lot of things being attributed to it that just aren't true. I think a lot of it comes from people being media illiterate and not being able to discern that a character being a piece of shit or doing controversial things are an endorsement of that behavior from the creators even if the character is the protagonist.
While I didn't see the video in full, your calm break down of the topics and the turmoil has made me decide I want to try it. I will make up my own mind like you did. Ty for this. I got to around 20 minutes and decided that I would buy it. I want to know now.
Thank you for such a well thought out and balanced review of Dustborn! Was heartwarming to hear your thoughts and opinions, and i'm happy you liked it as much as you did -- much love
Thank you for watching! I know that the negativity has been a lot, but I think that there are more people out there who are just waiting to realize they are going to become fans of this game.
Any assumption that the grants in Norway are given out for some political purpose hasn't also seen tonnes of Norwegian metal bands, from death metal to black metal, get the same kinds of grants.
Good point! Honestly, I wish we had art grants like that in the US. I have Canadian friends who have made all sorts of amazing stuff with grant funding.
Eeehhh i dont really see the “well written” characters and backstories you talking about. Story wise (because i was only able to watch full playthroughs), they really, REALLY fall falt to me. Some is might be annoying as all hell.
That's fair! I think that I was maybe more immersed in the story because I was playing and constantly making choices. I'm not sure how well things would translate if you weren't directly steering the story like that.
@@HiddenMachineGaming yeah i would assume so. Tho unlike some crusty old people thinking they’re cool calling it shit, i have reasons to not buy it that isn’t “it’s wokie”.
This video was extremely enlightening, never gave this game a proper chance. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and spreading the word about a game everyone gave up on!
After hearing about the various powers in the game I really, really thought it was. How do you give your protagonists powers like Cancel, Bully, Normalize, etc which are all basically mean manipulation tactics, then insist they're the good guys and morally sound??? It's so out of touch that I thought the creators must be right wing dudes doing a bit and pretending to be Left and horrible.
Idk if you watched the video, but they don’t insist that they are good guys and morally sound. Realizing the destructive consequences of using those powers is a major theme of the story and anyone claiming otherwise is talking out of their ass.
@@MoonlitLukaeven though what you said is entirely untrue, i dont see why you would be so shocked even if it was. I mean do you play video games like… ever? Theres tons of heroes who are put on pedestals even though they do awful things. Not to mention how tons of video games are literally just about shooting and killing people lol but yet so hung up on the whole cancel and bully thing in dustborn
@@Allgloss312 I was wrong about the characters, but I didn't think the other examples you listed are good things either. It's always a little odd when any project portrays terrible people as heroes. That or when people perceive terrible people to be idols or examples to follow. Patrick Bateman, Walter White, Jordan Belfort... I think people finding role models in them is a problem too.
@@MoonlitLuka i guess i just dont see it black and white like you do. Because sometimes heroes are terrible people, and sometimes heroes do terrible things. And also i dont believe anyone really idolizes characters like that. I just think people really love the characters because they are fascinating. And they do have admirable qualities, but i dont think anyone actually looks up to patrick bateman or walter white lol. I just think people love the characters because they are intense, interesting, complex characters. But theres nothing wrong with loving a villain or an anti hero. Anti heroes and villains are typically some of my favorite characters in media cuz they are just more interesting
Yoh, Did i play this, nope. Its not for me. So I watched another youtuber play 4 hours of it. Yes the writing can be on the nose. The songs can be a little corny, on purpose. But the game is actually trying to make a point. And Its also not what people are saying about it. This was some good investigative games journalism. A word i almost didn't use because we treat it like its dirty. Gaming discourse is trapped on a merry-go-round of sensationalism, drama & misinformation. And i want off this ride. The only way to stop it is with quality work like this. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. Take care & have a good one
To add to this, I found a box of about 200 comic books for this game at a liquidation spot. The text on the comic hints that they planned more from this franchise. These look like they were to be given out at some type of gaming or other convention. It makes me wonder if they just had extra leftover or if they chose to just not give them out at all. Who knows.
It took me WAY too long to finally find someone giving an honest critique of this game. I literally just watched 6 other youtube videos from channels very similar to "side scrollers"... All reacting to a couple of the trending clips of the game & then 'reviewing' it by screaming about the woke liberal they/them brainwashing agenda. I don't like the game personally, but I really appreciate you actually taking the time to play and review it.
People claim this nonsense about "viral clips" but when I search this game for a month now. I allways find a video with an entierly new botched awul wokie monologue from the game. I didnt play the game, but i I can ind this many evidences with so little effort, that means the game is full o it. Even the videos that people that "liked" the game published, they just prove what others said.
I'm glad to finally find a measured review of this game. The amount of shit these devs are getting is scary. Currently half an hour into your view and I agree with many points, but I do feel like you're missing some of the reasons this game became such a target when other equally diverse games don't. In short I feel like its a very obvious and on the nose metaphor for queerness that uses an XMen type setting (mutants are being persecuted) in lieu of actual queer people.
I totally know what you mean, and I really went back and forth on that. Out of the main characters, I think only Noam and Pax openly identify as queer. Everyone else either doesn't speak on it or presents as hetero. There's also the robot, who I didn't really speak about, but is an obvious stand-in for a trans character. Noam might also be trans, their voice actor is, and the prologue comic kinda makes it look like they may have had top surgery, but I'm hesitant to speculate too much on that and make any assumptions. Anyway, that X-Men style metaphor does seem to apply to all anomals in the game, and to my memory, every anomal is some type of ethnic or religious minority, or queer, or has some kind stigmatized body type... I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with you, but it seems to go beyond queerness alone.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Thanks for your response! Yes, you're right, "queer" was the wrong word to use here. Probably a better term would be the "us" from a perspective of a US-American Liberal mindset if that makes sense. I've only watched the first hour of gameplay and am halfway through your essay, but a moment that stood out to me was the "You know what the cops do to people like us" line right at the start in the car. Yes, it did make sense in the context of the characters, yet it at the same time felt incredibly meta, and that again took me out of the story. Ironically I think this could have been avoided by making the cast more homogenous, or at least not have it tick "every diversity box." I'm saying this with no malice, I'm gay and autistic myself, and representation means a lot to me. This is a fascinating albeit somewhat heartbreaking case study of media reception in our polarized culture.
@@EnQueMedida I totally agree. The game is very heavy handed with this metaphor, and in my opinion, it was a very bold move to go that heavy on it with every major character. The strength in it for me is that the characters are not wholly defined by their status as part of this loosely defined group of "others." They are each complex individuals, and allowed to be more than "the gay one" or "the Muslim one." While the diversity is at the forefront of the presentation, it's not necessarily at the forefront of the storytelling, and so it acts as a sort of litmus test. When I began to realize that this diversity angle was applied to every major character, it forced me to ask myself how much it really mattered and if it actually bothered me in any way. It put my own prejudices and biases in my face, things that I never really need to confront because I'm so rarely introduced to stories that feature such relentlessly diverse casts. In one sense, I think it's really cool that Red Thread would go out on a limb like that and present a full cast of protagonists that your average white male gamer wouldn't necessarily immediately or directly identify with. It set them up for a big backlash, but I commend them for seeing it through.
Yeah, i feel SO bad for them! they made a game where you play as a TERRIBLE person who treats everyone around her like shit, and has the power of a GOD to command them to do whatever terrible thing she wants, and she is called the "Good Guy" and the People who made it see *NOTHING* Wrong with any of that, either. but hey, go ahead and buy it! you'll be at least the 800th or so person that has!
@@Polygonlin You're projecting on me. I disagree with many of the creative decisions this studio made but I also feel bad for the massive backlash. You can enjoy it, that's fine, but keep in mind that these are still just people trying to make a living, and that the creative decisions that upset you were likely made by a few people on that team.
2:36 I'm still playing dust born, I became curious about it since the devs and the game are continuing to garner hate to this day. And I thought: "is it really that bad that people are still talking about it?" I'm at the part where the group are trying to get into the mall now, before they face off against futuristic science people. And so far.... I like the game, I like the characters, I like the mini game mechanics that help you progress, I always loved these kinds of games where you can basically make the story your own through dialogue options and choices you make in game. I heard so many bad things about sai, but I found *way of the mind* sai to be more reasonable and less "complain-y" The only complaint I had about noam is that its hard to find a balance in the choices she offers to just stay friends but also not make a love triangle (since Pax is pregnant and trying to get to her man in Nova Scotia... At least that's a theory I heard about it) Theo is pretty cool, I'm trying to get to the end of the game with the "ok dad" coda, cause I see him as a caring leader of the group. Pax is.... Honestly not bad, after the the recent updates to the game, you can make her a more likable character, in my opinion at least, I like how you can avoid using her vox to make things worst. Ziggy was really annoying at first, I didn't use vox in her at all and tried talking to her the whole liberty arc of the story, and someone even after revealing that Pax never "ran away" and that their moms lied to her, she still found a way to pissed off at Pax, which is funnily enough pretty annoying, but everything between them got resolved in the next arc which was pretty nice 👍 Eli Is the newest character now, and CT the caretaker bot lol I'm enjoying the game, the music mini game is alright, I like rhythm games, the me-em echo hunting minigames are cool, I like exploring every corner of a map and this just Incentivises me more. I really wanna try to get the best ending possible, in my opinion, for each character. And that surprises me, the game managed to make me care about where their story's end. I feel like a lot of people that play the game and then release a judgement and say it's trash don't really try to make the characters likable, they go into the game not with an unbiased mindset but already with their set hatred, and they play the game with that view : that "I hate this game" view It sucks that this game was sponsored using tax payer money, I understand some people have gripes with the leftist views of this game, but I don't think (what I've seen so far) is a bad message, I haven't seen the infamous racist scene yet, but instead I've seen the blatant discrimination for people with voice/ word powers, that scene with the police in the diner is very prominent in my mind because I have heard people talk like that in a racist manor, I like how it wasnt about race though, like vox gives a way to show discrimination in an ambiguous/non-specific kinda way, maybe it's race, maybe it's religion, maybe it's political opinion. I get why it had to be America if this was their intention, cause this is "the" place where all of that is present all the time. I feel like it was smart, it doesn't feel like its being shoved down my throat, because I've been places where that's just how people are. The me-em being used to pull misinformation out of peoples heads is *chefs kiss* perfect, in my opinion 😂 Because it's true, a lot of people who discriminate against a race, against a religion, or certain people with certain political standing, do so because of the misinformation they consume, or they're Generalizing, or they do so based solely on their own experiences, instead of seeing it as an isolated event they just generalize it to the whole group. It's an interesting story that's being told through the game, but maybe it's cause I'm playing the most recent version of the game, maybe they took out and changed some stuff, either way, I like it how it is rn, so far. But we'll see if that changes as I keep playing.
I think the marketing of this game did not know exactly what the game was about so did not know how to market it. I like the idea of this game and will probably pick it up when i'm in a slump of games to play.
Is there any other popular art form in which there's such a virulent and unreasonable culture movement objecting against ANY* semblance of politics and social commentary in it? I guess there's a parallel effort to do so with movies, but it doesn't ultimately succeed, because society accepts that movies are allowed to explore political topics and themes and have social commentary. For music, I think that attitude gets very little traction, because music is even more synonymous with political and social commentary too. But when it comes to games, the movement to deny particular games' validity in reaction to their perceived political and socio-cultural content is quite virulent. And of course, *not EVERY game gets interrogated so harshly for its politics. It's pretty obvious what kind of politics are targeted, and "target" is the right word (ironically, an explicitly political act for people who are so furious about politics in games). The idea that ONLY the things you disagree with are "political" is very naive. A lot of politics are invisible to many people when they take them for granted. Yet to other people, those politics may be loud and clear. And of course, the assertion that politics is being "force fed" or shoved down people's throats is often an entirely subjective one, because for some people, ANY recognition or acknowledgement of certain politics is too much. But honestly, who decides how much someone's expression is too overt, too much, too explicit etc.? We also really have to interrogate the common assertion that games [EDIT: as an art form] can be completely "apolitical" [i.e., ] the belief is incompatible with any assertion that games are also art. Art is inherently [conducive to ideas and expression that are] political, even if the viewer doesn't always realise or notice or are just unaware. [And as games become more increasingly sophisticated and complex in their themes, contexts, narratives etc. they become just as conducive to political themes as the other art forms above, e.g. movies, music, literature etc.] That doesn't mean people must partake in art that they disagree with or are not interested in. But certainly, to demand that a game YOU perceive as "unacceptably political" to NOT be political is in itself a political act. Again, you don't have to like all art or support it. But that's not what happens online. People campaign against the art and actively seek to deny its validity. The result is basically no different than the dishonest and manipulative behaviour of various "family values" groups that try to ban everything that scares them. As someone who grew up through the 80s and 90s Satanic Panics, I find that kind of offensive. If you don't want to partake in something, don't do it. It's so simple. Think about all the other areas of one's life where people are able to do that. But not games. It's bizarre.
"If you don't want to partake in something, don't do it. It's so simple." This is exactly what people are doing, they're not buying the game. The problem is that this is being attributed to malice instead of the more obvious conclusion - people just aren't excited to play this game. "We also really have to interrogate the common assertion that games can be completely "apolitical"." Please explain what political message Tōru Iwatani was trying to express when he created Pac-Man.
@@traditionaljeffery7800 if people were really just leaving it alone, Red Thread wouldn't have felt compelled to close off all of their social media accounts. I showed countless people going out of their way to bash the game. SideScrollers alone got five videos out of it.
@@HiddenMachineGaming I just checked, there are currently 11 people playing this game. Are we really going to attribute this to a handful of internet trolls? The people who make rage bait videos make up such a small percentage of gamers and there's an even smaller percentage of people that let those people dictate their game purchases. This is Occam's razor, pure and simple.
@@traditionaljeffery7800 The fact that there are so few people playing the game and so many people spending so much energy to bash the game is what I take issue with. I think it's goofy to get on a hater bandwagon like that for something that is ultimately so insignificant. I only made my video to offer a critical view of the game that wasn't trying to ride a wave of "anti-woke" rhetoric. Maybe the people making rage bait videos aren't informing the purchasing habits of potential players for Dustborn, but they are fueling what has become a four-year long campaign against the game that resulted in it halting any post-launch promotion efforts. If people really wanted to just not partake and move on, they had four years to do so, but that didn't happen. The game was never going to be a huge hit, but I don't see any reason for it to be torn apart like it has been. I've played tons of worse games this year that didn't receive any such attention. If Red Thread just wanted to tell a story on their own terms with their cast of characters, why have so many people spent so much time tearing that down? If people were acting the way you're suggesting, the game would have just faded into obscurity instead of being the topic of countless amounts of negative and often bigoted commentary on the game.
11:28 - okay, that summary would have made me instant wishlist this game. An alternate reality magical realism with spy elements? WHY THE HELL DIDN’T THEY PUSH THAT IN THE TRAILERS?
Right? I didn't really even grasp the concept until I was like 2 hours into the game. There are hints about those elements, but it's a slow immersion into that world.
Oh wow, I thought the negativity surrounding this game was exaggerated but this comment section is crazy :O Sad to see the negativity overwhelm any discussion about the game, as it seems like a story with a lot to say.
Everything it says is pretty bad. I've watched two full playthroughs of this, including on a left wing channel, and it's every bit as bad as people say. I'm kind of shocked Hidden Machine likes it. The writing is not good.
I played the game entirely. People from the 80-90’s created more compelling games with a fraction of the resources and without widespread internet access. I think it’s hideous to make a bad game and then cry on Twitter it’s failing because of the anti-woke crowd. People notoriously don’t care about DEI when the products aren’t a fuming pile of dung. To justify none buying the game you have two options: everyone hate direct inclusivity or Dustborn is appealing to none and it is a bad game. Developers could at least own up to the L instead of becoming maniac on Twitter.. sadly their names will never be cleansed from this project given their reactions on Twitter… I don’t see a future for them in the industry if they care to sell some copies.
People do care about diversity regardless of the quality of the game. Gamers constantly complain about the inclusion of women and non white protagonists, lgbt characters, etc etc. i think in this case for the majority dustborn is not a great game, but the hate train against this game is fueled by the hatred of inclusive and diverse games. Theres so many games worse than dustborn, and yet everyone has piled on to this one. I wonder why that could be…
True, a lot of ppl get angry when games use body type 1 & 2 but nobody cared when elden ring did it. I personally dont care bc calling it body type 1 & 2 still makes it binary, Checkmate dei 😂
"people notoriously don't care about dei" LOL gamers are some of the weirdest freaks online. If a game comes out today and there's a notable character that isn't white/male/straight a significant portion of Gamers™ will whine and cry about it until the next game comes around with the same "problem".
Great video as always. I share all the same thoughts. Its crazy how much the trolls are fighting against this. You can tell through their comments (in a general sense, not these youtube comments) who actually hasnt played the game and is just repeating stuff that they heard and people who just disagree with certain things. Ive been in conversations with people who said that they played the entire game or watched an entire playthrough where we have compared Pax to Joel and Kratos and they go on to say that its different because Joel and Kratos are doing what they do to survive and they have a kid to take care of and think about...uhhhh...okay...as if Pax hasnt been trying to survive her entire life...and...well yeah. You can tell that they are lying. Its like...the haters have put the game into another layer of meta by acting the way they are about a game like this. I played the game with "more combat" on and it was still super easy. Never died once but i did come close near the end but only because i got pinned up awkwardly against a pier and it knocked me out of bounds and force restarted the combat encounter. Oh yeah, and I was also annoyed with Sai at some points but I grew to like her a bit more when I tried. I had the most problems with Noam because I very quickly shut down the relationship option so all they talked about was going back home to their mom the entire game.
Thank you for checking it out! The hypocrisy in the criticisms of the game has been wild. Seems like you and I had a lot of similar feelings on the game. Glad to know the "more combat" option was still very easy, I was thinking about going with that on a second run, but I think I'll stick to "less combat."
The only actual good faith look at this game ive seen. I havent played it and dont really want to, but good work on actually taking a look and offering a considered opinion. Also just wait til that girl who thinks the song should be illegal discovers slipknots first album lol disasterpiece much?
You have my genuine thanks, thank you so much for genuine constructive review video, I purchased the game recently and I’d been struggling to find anything remotely constructive and helpful so I thank you for a honest respectful breakdown of the game, world and story
After looking into the setting it's pretty cool, but if the characters weren't so.... Cringe... I think it could have succeeded with a niche audience. I may check it out when it goes on sale.
Seems like I'd disagree with you about a lot of stuff but to be honest, it's nice to see someone else for whom Zelda 2 is one of their favourite games. It's just so underappreciated!
I really like sidescrollers, but I also actively enjoy a recalibration of opinions n expectations like this vid of yours here, I'm not 2 in2 the extreme opinions = valid opinions thing, btw there's worse lyrics in music, I listen 2 goregrind n brutal death metal lol
I’m similar, I listen to a lot of shows like SideScrollers even if I don’t always agree with everything they say. I also listen to a lot of grind and stuff and you are totally right about the lyrics lol
Probably the best marketing I've seen for this game, I didn't care about it at all, but now I'm definitely interested; it's a shame that I have so many other games that I wanna play and that I'll never get to playing Dustborn. Anyway, great video! I'm really happy to see that you also cover a lot of things other than Remedy related stuff (with which I discovered the channel) and that your videos are all really good! Keep up the good work! c:
I would probably rather drive nine inch nails through my eyelids than play this game, but you answered some questions I had, and this may be the only "real" honest review here on YT.
It looks interesting to me, maybe not my cup of tea and kinda cringe is some aspects, but the seething outrage even expressed in your comment section seems so off base! People are actively rooting for it to fail, why? The pearl clutching actually makes me want to try it out just to spite some of these "free thinkers." This isnt a soulless cashgrab by a large publisher, its an indie game that clearly has a lot of passion and intent behind what they made. So to all of the ignorant masses, if its not something that appeals to you just move the fuck along! 55:34 "Did you notice that they changed the American flag too? They removed the 13 original colonies?!" Oh no muh precious 13 original colonies! How dare they portray this *dystopian future* without the 13 original colonies!!!
The culture war has seeped into gaming to an extent where even the anti-woke crowd have become parodies of themselves. Even if Dustborn had been on a level of a GOTY contender, people would be rooting for it to fail because of the characters in the game.
Here, I'll explain. Gamers are starving for good games. Dustborn is pushed as some top tier game (not the tiny audience it was made for) which it never was. In general gamers don't care about diversity, LGBT, or any of that. They want a good game and this wasn't it by a LOOOOONG shot. As someone who loves alternative history, and have written some and read some, especially back in the prime of of the Xena fandom, this story would have been destroyed by those readers as a terrible take on alternative history. Sadly both sides are hiding behind their far left/right wing extremism in the debate of this game.
@@rizon72 Dustborn has a 68 critic score on Metacritic. It is not being pushed as a top tier game. Some outlets reviewed more positively than others, but that's bound to happen with any game that gets reviewed.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Those critic scores don't mean shit to me anymore. Critics very much are about pushing certain games over others, have been that way for decades. Saw it in the 90s, its even more true today. You mean to say that 8 years, millions of dollars and they were not pushing for a top tier game?
I appreciate the neutral stance on this game. Very insightful and well researched. Certainly not my kind of game, but I am the very least pleasantly surprised that the characters we follow are actually characterized well. I kinda like Pax's design and the style of the game, plus the alt history is kinda cool. Maybe if I develop a taste for telltale-likes I'll give it a shot.
I can't stand what Craig has turned into, I'm also sad to say that those grifters gave me second thoughts about picking this game up. Thank you for this deep analysis, I'm going to keep my eye out for a sale and pick it up for myself.
Think I might give the demo a shot cause the trailer did not make me like this game a d hearing that first song did not help. That bejng said can we get a link to the full track from the end of the video.
thanks for the review. i played the game too and about the narrative... i think the characters age should have been shaved by 10 or even 15 years. the canon ages dont fit their personalities. most characters have severe arrested development. pax acts like an entitled teen who feels the world owes her something, theo is a passive leader, noam puts on heirs, sai should be medicated. eli has naieve views of the world, ziggy also feels the world owes her something, ophelia is the edgy the world doesnt understand me type... sol was cool. at 25 im more mature than most of the characters and that contrast is jarring and impacts my connection. if they were younger the angst and conflicts would make more sense, since they have less experience and less defined personalities. i think the world building and pacing should have been more intentional and explicit. they had good ideas but they make the player head cannon too much. when did the timeline converge? how happened afterwards? why is pacifica a san francisco silicon valley analog when the divergence should have chabged that anyway.... the plot does a lot of tell not show. and we miss key moments to connect with characters thar way too
From what I’ve heard, the game was intended to be trilogy. Feels like there is a lot more story than they were able to fit into this one for whatever reason. Also, I hear you about the age, but I’ve toured with similar people in their mid to late thirties who act just as immature. With certain characters, their naive worldview and attitudes make sense to me because they have grown up in very insulated cultures that are all in various states of decay. The arrested development seems like a very intentional choice to give characters a mechanism for growth, but it doesn’t always pay off.
Apparently, it's thoughtcrime to do anything more than surface level or contextless analysis of the game according to the comments. I agree with your assessment for the most part, but I was harder on Echoes as a representation of misinformation, since I feel like its supernatural maddening effects actually downplay how insidious misinformation actually is. I find Justice fascinating as far as antifa antagonists go. Many games of this genre just use generically evil cops or reactionaries as their villains, but Justice was formed out of an extreme but genuine intention to fight crime, making them come off as misguided humanized villains rather than ontologically evil ones. They also embraced inclusive branding towards non-Anomal minorities and are probably less bigoted than most of the grifters talking about the game, but they are also hypocrites because they won't apply that kind of mindset to Anomals. IMO, they map more closely to cop-loving neoliberals than to mainstream or fringe right-wingers.
This is such a great video. It's awesome to see that you actually gave this game a shot instead of just writing it off. I'll definitely be checking it out now.
@@mrbemystar I mean, there is a free demo you can try if you want to see why its actually bad. It's a failure of a game in itself without getting into the politics of it.
I'm sorry, I've watched a whole playthrough of this game on multiple channels (including channels that are objectively not right wing, like YMS) and it absolutely as bad as everyone's saying. If an alt-right hardcore extremist wanted to make a parody of modern progressivism, they'd be more subtle than this game. The game is unintentionally hilarious - it's 2024's Ride To Hell. Sometimes you have to call something for what it is.. and I consistently fight most of those channels whenever they absolutely slander the bejesus out of Alan Wake 2 for absolutely ridiculous reasons that aren't true at all.
You have an entire section on "Shared Blame?" where your only criticism is that the devs didn't fight back against the "hate" hard enough without mentioning the gaming media deciding that this game was basically the second coming of gay black jesus. If the best thing you can say about the game is that the trailer was sh*t and games journalists decided to fight the culture war on behalf of the devs, then game may not deserve to fail but it was absolutely going to. Really tho, the fact that the game is filled with left wing buzz words and there is no exploration of how those words are used in language policing and censorship, tactics of the modern left, indicated that the devs are at least highly biased if not completely in on it.
My point of the Shared Blame section was to point out that both the developer and publisher ceased any post-launch promotion of the game. Even if they didn't want to try and "fight back", going totally silent like they have is just making them look like they don't believe in supporting their own work.
From what I've seen of the game, 3 things and not even talking about the politics. 1. Game graphics reminds me of an early 2000s game demo I played, which sucked. I dislike the overall graphic design in general. I know you liked it, but sorry, it looked bad to me. 2. Combat, its a joke. A two year old with a controller mashing random buttons can win these. 3. The song gameplay, again, a joke. Poorly designed to begin with and do you even have to play this to continue the "game"? Eight years, millions of dollars and for what? So we can pay $30 for a fancy, animated, choose your own adventure, graphic novel. Dustborn is what is wrong with the gaming industry. We're told to be happy to get this game, a poorly designed and laid out game. We want good games, we need to start demanding it and stop putting up with crap like this. When I worked in a computer game store 25 years ago, a game like this would have been laughed out of the store before we ever noticed the politics of it. This isn't a top tier game, its B level at best.
More games come out every single day than anyone could ever have time to play. 25 years ago was a completely different era of technology. I don’t see why anyone would take offense to a game they don’t like, there are a near infinite number of other games to think about instead.
@@HiddenMachineGamingBecause there's only so much money and dev power to go around in the industry, and games like this can influence said industry to put out more content like it over actual good games from great devs. Focusing on this for a few weeks and making sure the game industry hears people when they say "we do NOT want this becoming mainstream EVER" is the least that can be done to make sure mediocrity doesn't spread.
@@HiddenMachineGaming The problems within the game are already a continuation of mainstream problems, though. It's just more of political themes with plenty of potential being failed by extremely unsubtle, uncreative, and poor execution. While this game itself was never going to be mainstream, it had the misfortune of being a seemingly perfect representation of exactly what's wrong with modern gaming and media at a time where other games that kinda embodied the same issues were becoming MASSIVE financial failures. Now, is this game the source for all those already existing problems? No. But, the critiques aren't saying it is. It's just gamers capitalizing on the best possible chance to use examples of recent gaming failures to tell studios that this mediocrity is NOT what they want and to stop pushing this stuff in the mainstream. The hope is that companies get the message. Get it right by being thoughtful, creative, and interesting with it or don't bother at all and step out of the way so another game idea can get the funding and resources it needs to excel.
Most of the comments I see of people saying this game isn't that bad also immediately say it's not their type of game. The bottom line is there just isn't a market for this game. The "modern audience" that many developers have been targeting is very small. On top of that don't buy and support the games anyway. At the end of the day people want and buy good games. You don't get to decide if your game is good or not, the free market does. All the political talk for or against things like this don't really matter in the end.
I think the game was always going to be a niche experience. There is a market for the game, it’s just a small one, which is totally fine by me. I play dozens of games on Steam and itch.io that seem to be played by only a small handful of other people, and many of those games also received grant funding and/or have political messaging. The situation is super common, but it’s always weird to me when a game like this becomes such a high profile target for insults and criticism from people who have never and would never play it, especially when countless similar games are released every day that go unnoticed.
Saying the character interaction reminds you of Balder's Gate 3 is pretty understandable but here's the thing: Balder's Gate 3 doesn't spell outloud the character gender identity as much as Dustborn. This is one character issue that Dustborn and the late Concord have, I don't need the game to tell me that Noam is none-binery, I can see that from the way their character act and look like, having it getting yelled out from the game is unnecessary really.
just because you think you are "fair" toward this game does not mean everyone bashing this game is grifter and "kids". the dev literally advertise this game as a way to "fight the bigot gamer"
I’ve hardly seen the devs advertise the game at all, but I haven’t seen anyone else on UA-cam review or cover the game without intentionally misrepresenting it, and I’ve only seen one reviewer actually playthrough the game. Not everyone who bashes it is a grifter, but almost all of them are bashing the game based on rumor and second hand opinions rather than their own first hand experience playing the game.
@@HiddenMachineGaming have you even seem the dev interview? also “almost all of them” are based on rumor and second hand opinion? dude most of the player also bashing this game. you don’t have to eat shit to know it smell
The game arrived during "peak anti-woke season" in the gaming world. They have certainly been living under a rock when being surprised by the backlash. The harassment part of is probably not possible to even imagine. It's just how things turned out in 2024 and there's not much we can do about it right now (unless magic wands exists). It's going to be a thing for the foreseeable future to some degree I suspect. It's hard to say how much power this movement has, but it's certainly not zero. It's all about perception. The actual content of the game is not relevant.
You can't blame the devs. They went from mediocre games bringing in low 5 digit sales to an upfront high 6-7 digit DEI cash injection to make ideological material. Whatever puts better food on the table during terrible economies wins.
bro the devs are from Norway and they made this shit in 8 years, they do not deserve to be able to put food on the table if this is what they bring to gaming.
@@angel_of_rust 100% they don't deserve our money but the pockets of DEI are deep and mediocre developers view it as a godsend to take that route. weird take but, Dustborn existing is a good thing , a game that forever bookmarks their ideology in gaming
To me the true hero of the game is the one eyed red headed woman who keeps trying to desperately convince her fellow camp members (who are peddling OPIUM, mind you - and we're supposed to be on their side) that the main characters are messing with their heads and manipulating them. They frame her as the villain and wrong, while she's literally calling out what you're doing to everyone. The characters are terrible, terrible people and including powers like "Cancel" and "Normalize" are the most insane unintentional self-parody I've ever seen in my life.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Apparently the ghosts let her see the truth, that the main character are a bunch of manipulative liars who's entire powerset is gaslighting people.
This game honestly isn't what those incendiary game reviewer/podcasters are saying it is. This game is a condescending mess for all involved and it seems to be a cringe representation of an allegorical story. These kind of game developers always lose their main focus of motive during the application of such stories. Its like "Heres a story in a game that relates to real life, by using a hyper sensationalist narrative to explain our points." Its condescending and contrary to what their ethics allegedly represent.
@@HiddenMachineGaming That's great. But what I meant was, the sound effect is of ceramic breaking, not glass. You know, ceramic, made of of clay. Clay. I'm gonna leave now. Great video btw. A level-headed take is always welcome.
Personally, I feel like this game was made with a very single minded veiw that leaves very little room with empathy for each side of the argument. The devs wanted to shame, which is honestly the worst way to communicate your views with someone. Why would people listen to what you say if you insult them? Its not like games haven't tackled politics successfully before. Look at metal gear and disco elysium! Both are heavily political but not once dose it feel outright hateful to one side. Each side, or political stance is explained and critizied equally, allowing the player to make their own informed choices. Take the dock workers from disco elysium for example. The game shows you the veiws of both the strickers, 'scabs' and even the boss of the docks. You may not agree with their stance, but you can empathise with why they think like that. Nothing is black or white, very much like real life. Its comforting in a weird way. Dustborn on the other hand is simply "This is the only way and if you disagree even a smidge you are AWFUL" Politics should never be "im right and anyone that disagrees is wrong." as when that communication breaks down, we can't understand each other. Poltics without empathy is dangerous.
I don’t have an hour to watch this today, but hearing that you liked it makes me happy. I don’t like it. In fact, I put it on ignore on steam, but it’s at least nice to have at least a few people like bad games.
The complaints about getting money from grants I also don't understand. It's pretty standard stuff and most media projects apply for funding. Some of them do weight projects with diverse casts but that's just a small part of it. The most important part is to have the competence/trust to actually deliver as far as I know. or .. maybe even more important is what the fund decides to prioritize.
14:00 is where I realized this was not a good faith critique. You’re really threading the needle here, because you yourself saw a market opportunity for a contrarian variety of grifting
I feel like people are really misunderstanding me there. I am just trying to communicate that the US election was not the sole inspiration for the game. The quote from the dev mentions summer of 2016, which was when the Brexit vote happened, not the US elections. The quote goes on to mention a series of events, which I’m sure did include the election of Trump, but in that four year period we had so many other big political events, including a global pandemic.
I think the real problem with games like this, as evidenced by the initial reactions, is that most people are just not interested in these types of games. Most gamers just want to have a fun and enjoyable experience rather than be inundated with social commentary. Even the appearance of a game having political leanings of any kind is a big red flag for a lot of people. I enjoyed your measured commentary on this game but I think it was a mistake to spend time discussing the extreme reactions of right leaning gaming critics. On the other side of the coin, left leaning game critics would praise it for reasons other than the quality of the game. At the end of the day I don't think their opinions alone would have made this game a success or failure. I just don't believe a sizable enough audience exists for this particular type of game. While there might be a lot of loud voices on both sides I think the word that describes most peoples attitude toward this game would be - indifferent.
I hear you; I think a lot of people are likely to be indifferent about this one. I expected more people on the left to champion the game but left leaning game critics have been pretty quiet about this one, and the negative comments started before anyone even had a chance to play the game or know much about it. When I hear that there isn't an audience for "games like this", I have a mixed reaction. Having completed the game, I can confirm that it does not inundate players with social commentary. That's a part of it, for sure, but it's a part of so many other games as well. I think that what sets this game apart is that the protagonists are minorities. People were calling it SJW garbage literally seconds into the first teaser trailer premiering on the Future Games livestream. People looked at the characters in Dustborn, and just assumed that it would be a game that was constantly preaching at them instead of telling a worthwhile story. That sucks, because the story and lore in the game are really cool (in my opinion). No one complains about Fallout, Wasteland, Final Fantasy 7, killer7, Metal Gear Solid, Papers Please, Spec Ops: The Line, Max Payne 3, or even Skyrim for having strong social and political messages. There are so many games that are aggressively political and are still very successful, so when I hear that players just want to have fun and not get into all of the social and political stuff, I kind of question how legit that viewpoint is.
@@HiddenMachineGaming I think you might be overlooking the importance that appearance plays in people's reaction to something like this. I don't just mean the character designs or the graphical style either. Look at Hi-Fi Rush for instance, similar look, similar gameplay elements, a diverse cast of characters, and a focus on music and rhythm melded into the gameplay. And yet, two completely different reactions to those games. So why do people look at one of these games and say "Hey, that looks really cool!" and to the other they say "Meh, no thanks."? Even if it is as you say that Dustborn doesn't inundate players with social commentary I think you'd have to admit that it LOOKS like it does. Of the games you've listed, the ones I've played I do not associate with social or political messaging. It's important to distinguish between a story that contains a social or political element versus a story that contains a social or political message. Metal Gear Solid is a great example. While it would be easy to say that the game is merely a commentary against nuclear war (a sentiment I believe most people would share), this is not what Kojima was trying to convey. The real takeaway from the game is an appreciation of life, of not being ruled by your past, a universal theme that nearly everyone can relate to. One only needs to look at the history of popular games through the decades to see what gamers gravitate towards and it's not games that have strong political leanings one way or the other.
@@traditionaljeffery7800 good points! In the same sense that MGS has a much deeper message, I think Dustborn does too. However, you're totally right, the immediate appearance of the game looks to me like it would be some kind of flimsy SJW propaganda piece. Even with the politics removed, this game would definitely not be a massive success, but I do believe that many potential fans have been turned off due to the way it has been presented. I also think that some potential fans are just in the dark on the game due to the fact that advertising/marketing efforts seem to have stopped due to the studio being overwhelmed by trolls. Since posting this I've received messages from people who gave the game a shot after seeing it from a different perspective. For the sake of the studio and everyone there, I hope that it can find enough of an audience to keep them making games, they have plenty of other solid titles out there and likely have more good work left in them.
@@HiddenMachineGaming that's because aside from vocal minorities, most people don't make politics their personality. All of the games you mentioned are well written, unlike this one. The last time I saw a piece of media that failed so catastrophically in every single aspect was High Guardian Spice, which, like this game, flopped to the point that I'm pretty sure reviewers made way more money than the people who made these things. Also, this game is actually pretty racist. The characters are borderline offensive stereotypes, and the fact you can 'cancel' white characters as an Angry Black Woman(TM) almost feels like they're taking the piss. Also, the nonbinary character's main power is gaslighting, which... lol.
Tho i agree sidescrollers kinda cringe because everytime they talk about it it’s really a bloated “this is shit” kind of commentary. Worst they use the same screenshots and clips like damn.
I checked out their most recent episode where they break the news about Concord. They bring up a Forbes article about how much the game had earned and go on to say that Forbes is trying to push a false narrative about the game being successful. They say that Forbes covers for woke games all the time. I looked up the article, and it's about how Concord was a total financial failure. The SideScrollers crew just looked at the headline and called it fake news, even though the article was actually supporting their stance on the game. That show be entertaining, but it has no credibility to me.
Because its not about making money, the companies behind this are literally worth trillions. Money is an afterthought, but being able to shape society as they see fit is the closest description to being Gods, that's ultimately what it is all about. Having power to shape society as they see fit.
You sound paranoid. It’s a small studio that employs 15 people, they are not worth trillions. They got a minor publishing deal with a subsidiary of Quantic Dream and still needed to supplement that budget with grant money. There are no trillions behind this game.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Only the paranoid survive is a book you should consider taking a look at, but addresing your point. You are correct, it'd be incredibly silly to believe a 15 person studio is behind this. Its not, it is the trillion dollar worth hedge funds such as Blackrock, Vanguard and Dfinity, whose expertise, connections and ability to provide services allows them to get roles as viziers or advisors to many goverments, which is the way the influence power over countries without needing to have their ideas voted on. As always, mascaring as humanist altruism. This is how these companies manage to conquer and subdue different sectors, from the top to the bottom, but always starting and ending on finances. This is exactly how gaming, the music and film industry has been subdued, grants. ''We will give you ''x'' amount of money provided you follow ''y'' requirements'' Such requirements are ESG. Which does include adding the whole agenda of diversity and inclusion you've been seeing everywhere. It's pretty simple, if you bow the knee to their agenda they'll offer incredibly good rate loans, which logic would dictate businesses trying to turn a profit will take (Specially if they are unaware of the political agenda, or simply do not care due to greed). You cannot sit here, and tell me this giant push for Woke agendas is organic, specially with how widespread it is across our entire culture, and how badly received it is every single time. I am not paranoid. I can see where the sand is shifting.
@@MadSaurax Majority of people are progressive, it's the reason that conservatives haven't won the popular vote since 2004. Blackrock has made polls, majority of people want their investements to go to companies with good environmental, social and governance rankings. They aren't here to play gods, with other people's money, they are here to make money, and one thing you "jews are destroying the west" people keep missing is that governance is part of the rankings, that part is about how self governing/sustaining, a woke company is a failing company would have a low esg score, this, in the logic that you people lay out, let me ask you two things rhetorically, how big is the S score of a "woke" company and what is the S score of nestlé. Ubisoft, the company that's been dragged through the mud recently for being unapologetically woke, as a S score of 62(that's pretty bad), in comparison, nintendo has a S score of 80, maybe there are woke games that they made that I am not aware of. And Nestlé, a company where the social controversies are a big chunk of their wikipedia page, as a S score of 95, bruh, child labour and slavery make an appearance, if this isn't a clear sign that ESG scores are an afterthought so that the people that trust them with money feel good about themselves then idk what is, they have a high S score because this isn't about actual representation, this is about questions like "do you employ women/yes, no or null", how many black lesbian are there in nintendo games for their S score to be HIGHER than ubisoft? The thought that putting a lesbian in your product means blackrock will give you free money is maniacal, they exist to make money, doing so by investing it, money that isn't theirs, in your mind, people give blackrock money to invest, they put it into a failling business that has an agenda of diversity and inclusion, they lose my money.... profit(?), but at least they feel like gods. The reason blackrock is managing over 9 trillion in assets isn't because they throw it away to feel good, trust me. The push for woke agenda is organic, it came free with your woke society, people celebrated the first woman astronaut because it's an achivement even though we already had a man in space, diversity and inclusion makes the majority of society feel good, you can say "go woke go broke" until the cows come home, but when baldur's gate 3, hades or red dead redenotion 2 pull up you start making excuses as to why having a trans black disabled lesbian take the forefront of your screen isn't woke, people are more connected than ever and everyone wants to have an opinion on everything even when they have no understanding of it, I mean come on, the people that made this game match what you see on screen, they are diverse, but you don't even think they made it, scratch the paranoid allegations you are schizophrenic. You're seeing a huge push for diversity because the creators think it's important, because they are leftists, that's why, even in a private company that blackrock can't get their hands on, you see a push for diversity and inclusion, and no, the government funding that they got by the politians that were corrupted by the hedge funds would be enough to make the game. And the push for woke agendas isn't new, it just gets renamed every couple years, first it was woman, then it was non-whites, it's just that society has gotten more progressive over time, people have been pushing for this since before I can remember, maybe it started with civil rights, probably before tho. Scores were seen in knowesg .com If you want to talk more I think that the definition of woke needs to be established because I more often than not see it as "non-white, non-cisgender, disabled, left leaning anything on my screen" And when did the push for woke agendas start?
I think it's disingenuous to try to say the game was not influenced by the 2016 election based on the article you show in the vid, especially considering the article is from 2020 and Trump's presidential term would still be ongoing at the time, and they are referencing an ongoing situation that started in 2016. I mean come on.
Like I said, that was likely part of it, but there was so much going on politically and socially around the world during that time that I don’t think it was the sole inspiration. We were a good ways into the pandemic at that point.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Right, and there was also the country wide George Floyd protests - but neither the pandemic nor the protests began in 2016. And if we are talking about the overton window shifting to the right prior to the election, that's something that had been brewing for a few years leading up to 2016. So if we are looking to a series of events that started in 2016 I think it's pretty safe to say they are referring to the election of Trump as the first domino in the chain to fall. (Edit: Additionally, both the mishandling of Covid and the nationwide division and violence during the protests can directly be attributed to Trump's policies/rhetoric, so in 2020 that would be considered an ongoing series of events that started in 2016.)
@@무군 totally. I didn't mean for it to come off like the election wasn't a major tipping point, I just meant to express that it was one of many things that inspired the team. Focusing on the election alone spins it into more of a political binary thing, when the game really is about issues that transcend party politics.
It’s also completely mental to assume a Norwegian game development studio deeply cares about the particular US political party and is not just using the US setting to talk about societal issues that are prevalent all over the globe.
@@sasha_chudesnov I dunno man, the norwegian game development studio used Norwegian tax payer's money to fund a game about American politics, painting America as a dystopia. Especially, when the common left rhetoric during that time is that Trump will turn America to a dystopia. Seems pretty on the nose to me.
my only counterpoint to the enlightened centrism thing is just like... yeah, most politicians are bad/out for their own profit and not doing enough to make your life better, but that's still not a good reason to be ambivalent to which side is better. Because one side is objectively doing more than the other to make your life better. Only one side supports workers rights at all, or social services, or regulations to prevent price gouging - and it ain't the conservatives. Centrists will look at both sides and say both are bad and they don't want to engage with it. Meanwhile the Leftists are like "lol, we're just kinda cringe sometimes, and some of our representatives are closely linked to corporations so that everything stays as the status quo or gives a bit more to businesses" and the Conservatives are like "Every single one of our reps is completely beholden to corporate donors and we will do literally everything they say and we have a plan to literally overthrow democracy, strip away all human rights and eliminate every social support structure and regulation in the country and the less people who vote, the better our chances at being elected." And the Centrists will look at these options and go "I can't tell any difference between the two."
I hear you. I am not Centrist, and I can definitely tell the difference between the two parties. I just don't really care to engage with party politics in any kind of public way and don't plan to actively endorse any particular candidate. My views are a lot more nuanced than I could communicate in a UA-cam video, but even the politicians who make my life better still perpetuate a lot of stuff I can't condone, especially when it comes to foreign policies and protecting things like the industrial prison complex and the permanent war economy.
The problem is NEITHER side is better and if you say otherwise, you're very blatantly on one of the sides. It's like going "I don't want to support Hitler or Stalin! They're both evil!", then someone comes along and goes "But one side is clearly worse than the other!", and that person is clearly a Nazi or a Communist. They will try to convince you they're the lesser of two evils, but being the lesser of two evils still makes you evil. How can good triumph if it's helping evil? And hey, you know what happens when you say both sides are bad to a right-winger? They'll go "Conservatives just think you should give the unborn a chance at life, that marriage should be sacred, and that people have the right to defend themselves, while the liberalists want to commit white genocide and groom all our children for their degenerate harems, and they're backed by billion dollar corporates! How can anyone look at us and not tell the difference?". Because strip away all the phony morality and there is no difference. Both sides use the same tactics, love free speech only when they're not in control, play the victim when they're losing, get real smug when they're winning, say their opponents are diabolical one moment and impotent clowns the next, and most importantly, they both go "Why don't people see that MY side it the right side?" and mock people when they want nothing to do with them. Oh, and both sides keep diddling children.
A critique is defined as "a detailed analysis and assessment of something." I want critiques from critics, and I don't see how they can deliver that without playing the game. Games are interactive media; you should interact with them if you want to have a credible critical take on them. Anyone critiquing a game they haven't played is just talking. That same sort of ignorance is why grifter politicians tried to ban games like Night Trap, they were just using a game they didn't fully understand to push their own agenda.
Thanks for the breakdown. I'm gay as hell, but somehow missed hearing about this game during our monthly Gay Agenda™ meetings. I might just check it out! Jokes aside, I sometimes pass by games with stylized art design, as sometimes it just seems like that's the best part of those games, but y'all at Hidden Machine haven't steered me wrong yet, and I've liked everything I've tried that's associated with Quantic Dream so far, so maybe I'll dip in.
If you go into it with the right attitude it can be a fun ride. My favorite parts of the Quantic Dream games are when characters get into wild and unexpected situations, and this game has plenty of that
@@HiddenMachineGaming It is definitely rough and the dialogue tends to drag, but I think the story has more depth than people give credit. The writer also gets a lot of shit due to people taking him out of context and misreadings of what the game is actually trying to convey. That's at least how I see it, but the developer is actually working on a big update, that will completely replace the old combat system with a new one and add a bunch of extra story content, so hopefully it'll help us get a better understanding of what they were going for.
Pinning a comment that praise you is a very self entitled narcicistic cringe that is common among the leftist.
you are so mad
@@HiddenMachineGamingand you think you made a point pinning that comment? You proved him right goofy
@@ermanbumaguin8063 it made me laugh
Mmmm delicious chud tears
@@ermanbumaguin8063 You have no idea how hilarious it looks to see a guy draped in an Israeli flag that clearly hates PoC because you don't like "woke" things....using the terminology "goofy". Y'all love the shit we create and have no shame in taking it, but make excuses all day to hate us. Gotta love cognitive dissonance🤣
I'm glad someone is actually looking at the game with a cool head. It's still not a game I would play as I'm not into this genre at all, but seeing a take from someone who appears to not be invested in this culture war bullshit is appreciated.
Thanks!
I agree. I like hearing different opinions on games.
I thoroughly second this. There’s a ferocity to the modern discourse on games today that I don’t vibe with
Really glad to see there are others
I also gave it a chance, but even past the gut reaction and wake woke aspects I still found it very poorly written, thematically confused, and nonsensical, as if no one had edited the script.
The characters are unlikeable save for Theo and the veteran that joins later on, with the cast getting so bloated that it's hard to get invested in anyone after a while. Other games with big casts tend to give every character a time to shine (even if they become background decorations after that, unfortunately common in jrpgs), but in this case we're constantly told, not shown about Eli being this and that, Ophelia feels like a plot device with 0 personality, Nai Nai is... honestly a disgrace to humanity all around, the little girl is a nothing plot device, etc.
The music is frankly terrible, which is weird in a game that puts so much focus into it. I've met middle school kids with better compositions that whoever came up with... that. The last song is especially atrocious. I had to mute it whenever it came on because I couldn't handle the secondhand embarrassment. The "best" one is the first one, which by the way includes lyrics about newborns and pr0n back to back.
I agree that criticism shouldn't be based off perceived politics, and wahh wahh woke brainrot helps no one and does nothing, but the same goes for the other side. We shouldn't consider something good because it has diversity or an alleged good message, which this game also fails at, by the way. Not only is the protagonist ANOTHER angry black woman criminal raised by a single mom, but her sister is ANOTHER nerdy Asian girl with dyed short hair and multicolored streaks who likes robots and math, but is also brash and emotionally stunted. There's also the Mexican immigrant who randomly speaks in (machine translated) Spanish and the other major black character who is ANOTHER criminal, uneducated and ignorant. That's why this isn't real diversity. It's barely any better than racist cartoons from the other side... you know, it's almost like both extremes are mirror images of each other.
Terrible game + terrible presentation + terrible marketing + terrible response to criticism = easy target. It is what it is. At least they got EU money that could've been used to feed the homeless for months. Yay for equality!
It would never have gone to the homeless. It would have gone to the pockets of the CEOs who bankroll alt-right narratives, lies and distractions. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them made money shorting the related companies and indecies.
I have no interest in this game but your review was so well measured and communicated that I gladly sat through it all and at least tried to consider why my initial rraction was so hostile. Thanks for an awesome upload
Thank you for posting a coherent video on this game that's not just a kneejerk ranting ragebait
You’re welcome!
I can't really connect to PAX. Too me she comes over as EVIL. Not as “She has to because.” NO! Her actions are EVIL
I know she has her reasons, but the ACTIONS she does are horrible.
This game has potential, but so do most games. And not every game requires to be made for the average target audience.
But the target audience for this game is TINY. That doesn’t help with SELLING this game.
I think the only “good” here is that the developer already made their money through grants so who cares.
This game wasn’t made for 99% of the audience. So, 99% of the audience pointing and laughing can be expected.
Oh well, I am sure they will make another game. I just hope that there are characters I would CARE about.
Do you have similar difficulty relating to other game protagonists?
Doesn't the game make it clear that using Pax's powers to control others is almost always bad?
@@joshs7160 yeah, it's kind of one of the main plot elements in the game lol
This gives an interesting insight, but these characters still feel like cardboard cutouts.
I think one of the biggest weaknesses of the game is that it takes like 2 or 3 hours to get an idea of the characters on a deeper level. They really do have depth (in my opinion), but it’s really something that takes a while to come to fruition.
At least Cardboard Cutouts are worth money. And have practicality.
Dustborn does not.
The contrast between this Video and most other covering this game is insane. Easy Sub! Keep up the good work and thank you for this Video!
Thanks for the sub!
I had to scroll so far to find a video that wasn't birthed out of brain rot
or you could just pick up a less bland adventure game for half the price of this.
free lol
It’s just driving me a little nuts that you’re spending more time talking about the people who didn’t like the game rather than why you actually liked the game
tbh if it weren't for them, I wouldn't have been compelled to check the game out
I'm not going to try this game because it doesn't look like something I'd enjoy very much, but I commend you for releasing, this uh... "narrative free" review.
Haha thanks
i think the biggest problem of this game is that it was poorly written and voice acted. it's atrocious. and the way it approaches politics is embarassing. Look at Disco Elysium, the best political CRPG ever made, an absolute masterpiece, it's properly "woke" in a good and tasteful way, it's thought provoking and it's way more fun and engaging than this crap. Politics and social commentary in videogames always been a thing since the 90s. Games like Deus Ex, Fallout (especially New Vegas) and Metal Gear Solid are great examples of that, they all tackle politics without being cringe. Just watch that video "The Most Profound Moment in Gaming History" about MGS2, it's genius what Kojima did in 2001. These lame "woke" devs should take notes about how to write a good politically charged videogame.
Fair points! Personally, I liked the writing and voice acting, but it was very heavy handed in some ways that I think distracted from the stronger points in the writing. Disco Elysium is on another level though, it’s for sure one of the best games I’ve ever experienced.
@itneverbegan738 Thank you, well said. As someone who's loved Fallout (and who even had the patience to see FO76 evolve into something fun despite it's dreadful launch) I don't have anything against politics in games -- _IF_ it's well written AND well acted. But I just couldn't get past the sledgehammer-style of Dustborn's writing, coupled with what felt like stilted/awkward voice acting for many of the characters; and that's sad, because the devs are definitely capable of better games.
There’s the Tom Clancy video games.
The game definitely isn't for me. I watched your video on your experience with it, watched a full gameplay of it, and tried out the demo and can say it's not something I'll be happy spending $30 on. That said, it's nowhere near as bad as everyone says it is. It definitely does have elements of what people are complaining about, but there's a lot of things being attributed to it that just aren't true. I think a lot of it comes from people being media illiterate and not being able to discern that a character being a piece of shit or doing controversial things are an endorsement of that behavior from the creators even if the character is the protagonist.
While I didn't see the video in full, your calm break down of the topics and the turmoil has made me decide I want to try it. I will make up my own mind like you did. Ty for this. I got to around 20 minutes and decided that I would buy it. I want to know now.
Cool! There’s a demo available as well for a more brief taste of the game
did you like it ?
@@LuisRodriguez-jd5pt I did not. I will not go further. I beat it, and I will never speak of it again.
@@johnsharp740 fair enough
Thank you for such a well thought out and balanced review of Dustborn! Was heartwarming to hear your thoughts and opinions, and i'm happy you liked it as much as you did -- much love
Thank you for watching! I know that the negativity has been a lot, but I think that there are more people out there who are just waiting to realize they are going to become fans of this game.
Any assumption that the grants in Norway are given out for some political purpose hasn't also seen tonnes of Norwegian metal bands, from death metal to black metal, get the same kinds of grants.
Good point! Honestly, I wish we had art grants like that in the US. I have Canadian friends who have made all sorts of amazing stuff with grant funding.
@@HiddenMachineGamingwhy should tax payers funds be given to something like that when there are people who can't afford housing or even food ??
@@crowmagpie Those are socialist leaning concerns, my friend.
@@joshs7160 lol what??
@@joshs7160 do you think I am so ignorant that I just think "socialist" means "bad" 🤣🤣🤡🤡🤡🤡
Eeehhh i dont really see the “well written” characters and backstories you talking about. Story wise (because i was only able to watch full playthroughs), they really, REALLY fall falt to me. Some is might be annoying as all hell.
That's fair! I think that I was maybe more immersed in the story because I was playing and constantly making choices. I'm not sure how well things would translate if you weren't directly steering the story like that.
@@HiddenMachineGaming yeah i would assume so. Tho unlike some crusty old people thinking they’re cool calling it shit, i have reasons to not buy it that isn’t “it’s wokie”.
This video was extremely enlightening, never gave this game a proper chance. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and spreading the word about a game everyone gave up on!
Thanks for watching!
Lol, soy boy comment
Interesting to see someone liking some of the character design. It is enlightening to have someone explain their thoughts that like this portion.
the crazy thing about this game is thats its not a parody lol
After hearing about the various powers in the game I really, really thought it was.
How do you give your protagonists powers like Cancel, Bully, Normalize, etc which are all basically mean manipulation tactics, then insist they're the good guys and morally sound??? It's so out of touch that I thought the creators must be right wing dudes doing a bit and pretending to be Left and horrible.
Idk if you watched the video, but they don’t insist that they are good guys and morally sound. Realizing the destructive consequences of using those powers is a major theme of the story and anyone claiming otherwise is talking out of their ass.
@@MoonlitLukaeven though what you said is entirely untrue, i dont see why you would be so shocked even if it was. I mean do you play video games like… ever? Theres tons of heroes who are put on pedestals even though they do awful things. Not to mention how tons of video games are literally just about shooting and killing people lol but yet so hung up on the whole cancel and bully thing in dustborn
@@Allgloss312 I was wrong about the characters, but I didn't think the other examples you listed are good things either.
It's always a little odd when any project portrays terrible people as heroes. That or when people perceive terrible people to be idols or examples to follow. Patrick Bateman, Walter White, Jordan Belfort... I think people finding role models in them is a problem too.
@@MoonlitLuka i guess i just dont see it black and white like you do. Because sometimes heroes are terrible people, and sometimes heroes do terrible things. And also i dont believe anyone really idolizes characters like that. I just think people really love the characters because they are fascinating. And they do have admirable qualities, but i dont think anyone actually looks up to patrick bateman or walter white lol. I just think people love the characters because they are intense, interesting, complex characters. But theres nothing wrong with loving a villain or an anti hero. Anti heroes and villains are typically some of my favorite characters in media cuz they are just more interesting
I see that the video title is no longer "dustborn review without the grift". It was a good title. I woudn't have clicked if I saw the current title
lol
1:12
Yoh,
Did i play this, nope. Its not for me. So I watched another youtuber play 4 hours of it. Yes the writing can be on the nose. The songs can be a little corny, on purpose. But the game is actually trying to make a point. And Its also not what people are saying about it.
This was some good investigative games journalism. A word i almost didn't use because we treat it like its dirty. Gaming discourse is trapped on a merry-go-round of sensationalism, drama & misinformation. And i want off this ride. The only way to stop it is with quality work like this. Thank you for taking the time to put this together.
Take care & have a good one
Thank you!
26:27 LOL gotta love the willful ignorance self victimization combo!
"They want us dead" // "I heard that line!"
They want so badly to look like martyrs
cheers for an actual fair look at this, no one else has been actually looking at this just farming it for views
Thanks for watching! That was exactly why I decided to cover the game, I had to see for myself what was up.
To add to this, I found a box of about 200 comic books for this game at a liquidation spot. The text on the comic hints that they planned more from this franchise. These look like they were to be given out at some type of gaming or other convention. It makes me wonder if they just had extra leftover or if they chose to just not give them out at all. Who knows.
Wow! I was told by a dev that a trilogy was planned.
It took me WAY too long to finally find someone giving an honest critique of this game. I literally just watched 6 other youtube videos from channels very similar to "side scrollers"... All reacting to a couple of the trending clips of the game & then 'reviewing' it by screaming about the woke liberal they/them brainwashing agenda. I don't like the game personally, but I really appreciate you actually taking the time to play and review it.
Happy to hear that!
People claim this nonsense about "viral clips" but when I search this game for a month now. I allways find a video with an entierly new botched awul wokie monologue from the game. I didnt play the game, but i I can ind this many evidences with so little effort, that means the game is full o it. Even the videos that people that "liked" the game published, they just prove what others said.
Great video. Really appreciate that there are folks interested in cutting through the bullshit and trying to take a truly journalistic approach
Many thanks!
Stuttering Craig would really flip his noodle if he ever heard Five to One by the Doors
I'm glad to finally find a measured review of this game. The amount of shit these devs are getting is scary.
Currently half an hour into your view and I agree with many points, but I do feel like you're missing some of the reasons this game became such a target when other equally diverse games don't. In short I feel like its a very obvious and on the nose metaphor for queerness that uses an XMen type setting (mutants are being persecuted) in lieu of actual queer people.
I totally know what you mean, and I really went back and forth on that. Out of the main characters, I think only Noam and Pax openly identify as queer. Everyone else either doesn't speak on it or presents as hetero. There's also the robot, who I didn't really speak about, but is an obvious stand-in for a trans character. Noam might also be trans, their voice actor is, and the prologue comic kinda makes it look like they may have had top surgery, but I'm hesitant to speculate too much on that and make any assumptions.
Anyway, that X-Men style metaphor does seem to apply to all anomals in the game, and to my memory, every anomal is some type of ethnic or religious minority, or queer, or has some kind stigmatized body type... I guess what I'm saying is that I agree with you, but it seems to go beyond queerness alone.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Thanks for your response! Yes, you're right, "queer" was the wrong word to use here. Probably a better term would be the "us" from a perspective of a US-American Liberal mindset if that makes sense. I've only watched the first hour of gameplay and am halfway through your essay, but a moment that stood out to me was the "You know what the cops do to people like us" line right at the start in the car. Yes, it did make sense in the context of the characters, yet it at the same time felt incredibly meta, and that again took me out of the story. Ironically I think this could have been avoided by making the cast more homogenous, or at least not have it tick "every diversity box." I'm saying this with no malice, I'm gay and autistic myself, and representation means a lot to me. This is a fascinating albeit somewhat heartbreaking case study of media reception in our polarized culture.
@@EnQueMedida I totally agree. The game is very heavy handed with this metaphor, and in my opinion, it was a very bold move to go that heavy on it with every major character.
The strength in it for me is that the characters are not wholly defined by their status as part of this loosely defined group of "others." They are each complex individuals, and allowed to be more than "the gay one" or "the Muslim one."
While the diversity is at the forefront of the presentation, it's not necessarily at the forefront of the storytelling, and so it acts as a sort of litmus test. When I began to realize that this diversity angle was applied to every major character, it forced me to ask myself how much it really mattered and if it actually bothered me in any way. It put my own prejudices and biases in my face, things that I never really need to confront because I'm so rarely introduced to stories that feature such relentlessly diverse casts.
In one sense, I think it's really cool that Red Thread would go out on a limb like that and present a full cast of protagonists that your average white male gamer wouldn't necessarily immediately or directly identify with. It set them up for a big backlash, but I commend them for seeing it through.
Yeah, i feel SO bad for them! they made a game where you play as a TERRIBLE person who treats everyone around her like shit, and has the power of a GOD to command them to do whatever terrible thing she wants, and she is called the "Good Guy" and the People who made it see *NOTHING* Wrong with any of that, either.
but hey, go ahead and buy it! you'll be at least the 800th or so person that has!
@@Polygonlin You're projecting on me. I disagree with many of the creative decisions this studio made but I also feel bad for the massive backlash. You can enjoy it, that's fine, but keep in mind that these are still just people trying to make a living, and that the creative decisions that upset you were likely made by a few people on that team.
2:36
I'm still playing dust born, I became curious about it since the devs and the game are continuing to garner hate to this day. And I thought:
"is it really that bad that people are still talking about it?"
I'm at the part where the group are trying to get into the mall now, before they face off against futuristic science people.
And so far.... I like the game, I like the characters, I like the mini game mechanics that help you progress, I always loved these kinds of games where you can basically make the story your own through dialogue options and choices you make in game.
I heard so many bad things about sai, but I found *way of the mind* sai to be more reasonable and less "complain-y"
The only complaint I had about noam is that its hard to find a balance in the choices she offers to just stay friends but also not make a love triangle
(since Pax is pregnant and trying to get to her man in Nova Scotia... At least that's a theory I heard about it)
Theo is pretty cool, I'm trying to get to the end of the game with the "ok dad" coda, cause I see him as a caring leader of the group.
Pax is.... Honestly not bad, after the the recent updates to the game, you can make her a more likable character, in my opinion at least, I like how you can avoid using her vox to make things worst.
Ziggy was really annoying at first, I didn't use vox in her at all and tried talking to her the whole liberty arc of the story, and someone even after revealing that Pax never "ran away" and that their moms lied to her, she still found a way to pissed off at Pax, which is funnily enough pretty annoying, but everything between them got resolved in the next arc which was pretty nice 👍
Eli Is the newest character now, and CT the caretaker bot lol
I'm enjoying the game, the music mini game is alright, I like rhythm games, the me-em echo hunting minigames are cool, I like exploring every corner of a map and this just Incentivises me more.
I really wanna try to get the best ending possible, in my opinion, for each character. And that surprises me, the game managed to make me care about where their story's end.
I feel like a lot of people that play the game and then release a judgement and say it's trash don't really try to make the characters likable, they go into the game not with an unbiased mindset but already with their set hatred, and they play the game with that view : that "I hate this game" view
It sucks that this game was
sponsored using tax payer money, I understand some people have gripes with the leftist views of this game, but I don't think (what I've seen so far) is a bad message, I haven't seen the infamous racist scene yet, but instead I've seen the blatant discrimination for people with voice/ word powers, that scene with the police in the diner is very prominent in my mind because I have heard people talk like that in a racist manor, I like how it wasnt about race though, like vox gives a way to show discrimination in an ambiguous/non-specific kinda way, maybe it's race, maybe it's religion, maybe it's political opinion.
I get why it had to be America if this was their intention, cause this is "the" place where all of that is present all the time.
I feel like it was smart, it doesn't feel like its being shoved down my throat, because I've been places where that's just how people are.
The me-em being used to pull misinformation out of peoples heads is *chefs kiss* perfect, in my opinion 😂
Because it's true, a lot of people who discriminate against a race, against a religion, or certain people with certain political standing, do so because of the misinformation they consume, or they're Generalizing, or they do so based solely on their own experiences, instead of seeing it as an isolated event they just generalize it to the whole group.
It's an interesting story that's being told through the game, but maybe it's cause I'm playing the most recent version of the game, maybe they took out and changed some stuff, either way, I like it how it is rn, so far.
But we'll see if that changes as I keep playing.
Finally someone made a nuanced review of this game!
nice postal 2 map music!
Haha good ear
Finally an actual review of this game by someone who gave it a fair shot.
This game doesn't need a fair shot though, lol.
Yes, it does. All games does ignoring that is disenganious nonsense.@@mrbemystar
I think he should give Birth of a Nation a fair shot. Would be a lot less racist than this game.
@@guillermoelnino No, it won't the heck you talking about?? That movie should stay burried
@@bunnyconcubus8468 tell me why i brought it up genius.
I think the marketing of this game did not know exactly what the game was about so did not know how to market it. I like the idea of this game and will probably pick it up when i'm in a slump of games to play.
I think you're right. The game is 50% off on Steam for the next 46 hours, might be the right time to cop it
Is there any other popular art form in which there's such a virulent and unreasonable culture movement objecting against ANY* semblance of politics and social commentary in it? I guess there's a parallel effort to do so with movies, but it doesn't ultimately succeed, because society accepts that movies are allowed to explore political topics and themes and have social commentary.
For music, I think that attitude gets very little traction, because music is even more synonymous with political and social commentary too. But when it comes to games, the movement to deny particular games' validity in reaction to their perceived political and socio-cultural content is quite virulent.
And of course, *not EVERY game gets interrogated so harshly for its politics. It's pretty obvious what kind of politics are targeted, and "target" is the right word (ironically, an explicitly political act for people who are so furious about politics in games).
The idea that ONLY the things you disagree with are "political" is very naive. A lot of politics are invisible to many people when they take them for granted. Yet to other people, those politics may be loud and clear.
And of course, the assertion that politics is being "force fed" or shoved down people's throats is often an entirely subjective one, because for some people, ANY recognition or acknowledgement of certain politics is too much. But honestly, who decides how much someone's expression is too overt, too much, too explicit etc.?
We also really have to interrogate the common assertion that games [EDIT: as an art form] can be completely "apolitical" [i.e., ] the belief is incompatible with any assertion that games are also art. Art is inherently [conducive to ideas and expression that are] political, even if the viewer doesn't always realise or notice or are just unaware. [And as games become more increasingly sophisticated and complex in their themes, contexts, narratives etc. they become just as conducive to political themes as the other art forms above, e.g. movies, music, literature etc.]
That doesn't mean people must partake in art that they disagree with or are not interested in. But certainly, to demand that a game YOU perceive as "unacceptably political" to NOT be political is in itself a political act.
Again, you don't have to like all art or support it. But that's not what happens online. People campaign against the art and actively seek to deny its validity. The result is basically no different than the dishonest and manipulative behaviour of various "family values" groups that try to ban everything that scares them. As someone who grew up through the 80s and 90s Satanic Panics, I find that kind of offensive.
If you don't want to partake in something, don't do it. It's so simple. Think about all the other areas of one's life where people are able to do that. But not games. It's bizarre.
Really well said!
"If you don't want to partake in something, don't do it. It's so simple."
This is exactly what people are doing, they're not buying the game. The problem is that this is being attributed to malice instead of the more obvious conclusion - people just aren't excited to play this game.
"We also really have to interrogate the common assertion that games can be completely "apolitical"."
Please explain what political message Tōru Iwatani was trying to express when he created Pac-Man.
@@traditionaljeffery7800 if people were really just leaving it alone, Red Thread wouldn't have felt compelled to close off all of their social media accounts. I showed countless people going out of their way to bash the game. SideScrollers alone got five videos out of it.
@@HiddenMachineGaming I just checked, there are currently 11 people playing this game. Are we really going to attribute this to a handful of internet trolls? The people who make rage bait videos make up such a small percentage of gamers and there's an even smaller percentage of people that let those people dictate their game purchases. This is Occam's razor, pure and simple.
@@traditionaljeffery7800 The fact that there are so few people playing the game and so many people spending so much energy to bash the game is what I take issue with. I think it's goofy to get on a hater bandwagon like that for something that is ultimately so insignificant.
I only made my video to offer a critical view of the game that wasn't trying to ride a wave of "anti-woke" rhetoric. Maybe the people making rage bait videos aren't informing the purchasing habits of potential players for Dustborn, but they are fueling what has become a four-year long campaign against the game that resulted in it halting any post-launch promotion efforts. If people really wanted to just not partake and move on, they had four years to do so, but that didn't happen. The game was never going to be a huge hit, but I don't see any reason for it to be torn apart like it has been. I've played tons of worse games this year that didn't receive any such attention. If Red Thread just wanted to tell a story on their own terms with their cast of characters, why have so many people spent so much time tearing that down? If people were acting the way you're suggesting, the game would have just faded into obscurity instead of being the topic of countless amounts of negative and often bigoted commentary on the game.
11:28 - okay, that summary would have made me instant wishlist this game. An alternate reality magical realism with spy elements?
WHY THE HELL DIDN’T THEY PUSH THAT IN THE TRAILERS?
Right? I didn't really even grasp the concept until I was like 2 hours into the game. There are hints about those elements, but it's a slow immersion into that world.
because he's lying and full of shit...the games woke and pure propaganda
Yeah the trailers were really poorly done.
woke idiots don't actually want to give customers what they want. they rather insult them then complain when they can't sell at all.
Sounds like the trailers and pre-release information REALLY screwed this one over. If I can get it on sale, I might check it out.
Picking it up on sale feels right to me. If you're into story driven games, especially any of the Quantic Dream titles, you might really enjoy it.
@@HiddenMachineGaming we found the modern audience
@@HickoryChip0 All one of him.
Oh wow, I thought the negativity surrounding this game was exaggerated but this comment section is crazy :O
Sad to see the negativity overwhelm any discussion about the game, as it seems like a story with a lot to say.
Everything it says is pretty bad. I've watched two full playthroughs of this, including on a left wing channel, and it's every bit as bad as people say.
I'm kind of shocked Hidden Machine likes it. The writing is not good.
I played the game entirely. People from the 80-90’s created more compelling games with a fraction of the resources and without widespread internet access. I think it’s hideous to make a bad game and then cry on Twitter it’s failing because of the anti-woke crowd. People notoriously don’t care about DEI when the products aren’t a fuming pile of dung. To justify none buying the game you have two options: everyone hate direct inclusivity or Dustborn is appealing to none and it is a bad game. Developers could at least own up to the L instead of becoming maniac on Twitter.. sadly their names will never be cleansed from this project given their reactions on Twitter… I don’t see a future for them in the industry if they care to sell some copies.
People do care about diversity regardless of the quality of the game. Gamers constantly complain about the inclusion of women and non white protagonists, lgbt characters, etc etc. i think in this case for the majority dustborn is not a great game, but the hate train against this game is fueled by the hatred of inclusive and diverse games. Theres so many games worse than dustborn, and yet everyone has piled on to this one. I wonder why that could be…
True, a lot of ppl get angry when games use body type 1 & 2 but nobody cared when elden ring did it.
I personally dont care bc calling it body type 1 & 2 still makes it binary,
Checkmate dei 😂
"people notoriously don't care about dei" LOL gamers are some of the weirdest freaks online. If a game comes out today and there's a notable character that isn't white/male/straight a significant portion of Gamers™ will whine and cry about it until the next game comes around with the same "problem".
Well, did you like it?
Great video as always. I share all the same thoughts. Its crazy how much the trolls are fighting against this. You can tell through their comments (in a general sense, not these youtube comments) who actually hasnt played the game and is just repeating stuff that they heard and people who just disagree with certain things.
Ive been in conversations with people who said that they played the entire game or watched an entire playthrough where we have compared Pax to Joel and Kratos and they go on to say that its different because Joel and Kratos are doing what they do to survive and they have a kid to take care of and think about...uhhhh...okay...as if Pax hasnt been trying to survive her entire life...and...well yeah. You can tell that they are lying. Its like...the haters have put the game into another layer of meta by acting the way they are about a game like this.
I played the game with "more combat" on and it was still super easy. Never died once but i did come close near the end but only because i got pinned up awkwardly against a pier and it knocked me out of bounds and force restarted the combat encounter.
Oh yeah, and I was also annoyed with Sai at some points but I grew to like her a bit more when I tried. I had the most problems with Noam because I very quickly shut down the relationship option so all they talked about was going back home to their mom the entire game.
Thank you for checking it out! The hypocrisy in the criticisms of the game has been wild. Seems like you and I had a lot of similar feelings on the game.
Glad to know the "more combat" option was still very easy, I was thinking about going with that on a second run, but I think I'll stick to "less combat."
The only actual good faith look at this game ive seen. I havent played it and dont really want to, but good work on actually taking a look and offering a considered opinion.
Also just wait til that girl who thinks the song should be illegal discovers slipknots first album lol disasterpiece much?
Thanks for watching! Honestly, I expected the SideScrollers crew to be very pro free speech, that was a very weird take from them
You have my genuine thanks, thank you so much for genuine constructive review video, I purchased the game recently and I’d been struggling to find anything remotely constructive and helpful so I thank you for a honest respectful breakdown of the game, world and story
Thank you!
After looking into the setting it's pretty cool, but if the characters weren't so.... Cringe... I think it could have succeeded with a niche audience. I may check it out when it goes on sale.
It definitely took me a little while to get past my first impressions of the characters.
Thank you for this, it was much needed! 🧡
You're welcome!
Seems like I'd disagree with you about a lot of stuff but to be honest, it's nice to see someone else for whom Zelda 2 is one of their favourite games. It's just so underappreciated!
At least we can agree on that!
Max payne i see your a man of culture 😊
I really like sidescrollers, but I also actively enjoy a recalibration of opinions n expectations like this vid of yours here, I'm not 2 in2 the extreme opinions = valid opinions thing, btw there's worse lyrics in music, I listen 2 goregrind n brutal death metal lol
I’m similar, I listen to a lot of shows like SideScrollers even if I don’t always agree with everything they say. I also listen to a lot of grind and stuff and you are totally right about the lyrics lol
Crazy. Someone actually played the game and isn't being disingenuous for clicks.
Probably the best marketing I've seen for this game, I didn't care about it at all, but now I'm definitely interested; it's a shame that I have so many other games that I wanna play and that I'll never get to playing Dustborn.
Anyway, great video! I'm really happy to see that you also cover a lot of things other than Remedy related stuff (with which I discovered the channel) and that your videos are all really good!
Keep up the good work! c:
Thanks for checking out the video! I really appreciate the kind words.
I didn't know stuttering craig became cringe. Rip
I would probably rather drive nine inch nails through my eyelids than play this game, but you answered some questions I had, and this may be the only "real" honest review here on YT.
No.
It looks interesting to me, maybe not my cup of tea and kinda cringe is some aspects, but the seething outrage even expressed in your comment section seems so off base! People are actively rooting for it to fail, why? The pearl clutching actually makes me want to try it out just to spite some of these "free thinkers." This isnt a soulless cashgrab by a large publisher, its an indie game that clearly has a lot of passion and intent behind what they made. So to all of the ignorant masses, if its not something that appeals to you just move the fuck along!
55:34 "Did you notice that they changed the American flag too? They removed the 13 original colonies?!" Oh no muh precious 13 original colonies! How dare they portray this *dystopian future* without the 13 original colonies!!!
The culture war has seeped into gaming to an extent where even the anti-woke crowd have become parodies of themselves. Even if Dustborn had been on a level of a GOTY contender, people would be rooting for it to fail because of the characters in the game.
Well said!
Here, I'll explain. Gamers are starving for good games. Dustborn is pushed as some top tier game (not the tiny audience it was made for) which it never was.
In general gamers don't care about diversity, LGBT, or any of that. They want a good game and this wasn't it by a LOOOOONG shot.
As someone who loves alternative history, and have written some and read some, especially back in the prime of of the Xena fandom, this story would have been destroyed by those readers as a terrible take on alternative history.
Sadly both sides are hiding behind their far left/right wing extremism in the debate of this game.
@@rizon72 Dustborn has a 68 critic score on Metacritic. It is not being pushed as a top tier game. Some outlets reviewed more positively than others, but that's bound to happen with any game that gets reviewed.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Those critic scores don't mean shit to me anymore. Critics very much are about pushing certain games over others, have been that way for decades. Saw it in the 90s, its even more true today.
You mean to say that 8 years, millions of dollars and they were not pushing for a top tier game?
What do you mean the review starts at 42:19?
A critique is an analysis, I’m giving some context before reviewing the game itself
Well just take 42:19 away from 1:08:57 and that is the approximate time for someone to realise how bad this game is and go play a better game
I appreciate the neutral stance on this game. Very insightful and well researched. Certainly not my kind of game, but I am the very least pleasantly surprised that the characters we follow are actually characterized well. I kinda like Pax's design and the style of the game, plus the alt history is kinda cool. Maybe if I develop a taste for telltale-likes I'll give it a shot.
I can't stand what Craig has turned into, I'm also sad to say that those grifters gave me second thoughts about picking this game up. Thank you for this deep analysis, I'm going to keep my eye out for a sale and pick it up for myself.
Thanks for checking out the video! I was on ScrewAttack every day back when it launched, definitely a bummer to see where Craig wound up.
@@HiddenMachineGaming he's a straight married man and you're shilling for DEI woke slop
Think I might give the demo a shot cause the trailer did not make me like this game a d hearing that first song did not help. That bejng said can we get a link to the full track from the end of the video.
ua-cam.com/video/4G4FUI4RoUI/v-deo.html
thanks for the review. i played the game too and about the narrative...
i think the characters age should have been shaved by 10 or even 15 years. the canon ages dont fit their personalities. most characters have severe arrested development. pax acts like an entitled teen who feels the world owes her something, theo is a passive leader, noam puts on heirs, sai should be medicated. eli has naieve views of the world, ziggy also feels the world owes her something, ophelia is the edgy the world doesnt understand me type... sol was cool.
at 25 im more mature than most of the characters and that contrast is jarring and impacts my connection.
if they were younger the angst and conflicts would make more sense, since they have less experience and less defined personalities.
i think the world building and pacing should have been more intentional and explicit.
they had good ideas but they make the player head cannon too much. when did the timeline converge? how happened afterwards? why is pacifica a san francisco silicon valley analog when the divergence should have chabged that
anyway.... the plot does a lot of tell not show. and we miss key moments to connect with characters thar way too
From what I’ve heard, the game was intended to be trilogy. Feels like there is a lot more story than they were able to fit into this one for whatever reason.
Also, I hear you about the age, but I’ve toured with similar people in their mid to late thirties who act just as immature. With certain characters, their naive worldview and attitudes make sense to me because they have grown up in very insulated cultures that are all in various states of decay. The arrested development seems like a very intentional choice to give characters a mechanism for growth, but it doesn’t always pay off.
Apparently, it's thoughtcrime to do anything more than surface level or contextless analysis of the game according to the comments. I agree with your assessment for the most part, but I was harder on Echoes as a representation of misinformation, since I feel like its supernatural maddening effects actually downplay how insidious misinformation actually is.
I find Justice fascinating as far as antifa antagonists go. Many games of this genre just use generically evil cops or reactionaries as their villains, but Justice was formed out of an extreme but genuine intention to fight crime, making them come off as misguided humanized villains rather than ontologically evil ones. They also embraced inclusive branding towards non-Anomal minorities and are probably less bigoted than most of the grifters talking about the game, but they are also hypocrites because they won't apply that kind of mindset to Anomals. IMO, they map more closely to cop-loving neoliberals than to mainstream or fringe right-wingers.
As someone who is incredibly attached to politics, I appreciate your views 1000%. I wish more people would think that way.
Many thanks!
Did you see the Ragnar Tørnquist - Draugen interview with Adventure Gamers?
No, but I will check it out
hello, do you have a link please?
adventuregamers.com/articles/view/37477
This is such a great video. It's awesome to see that you actually gave this game a shot instead of just writing it off. I'll definitely be checking it out now.
Many thanks!
i'm gonna write it off and not play it! I don't support devs who hate me and yet expect me to pay money on it, GTFO @YourFavoriteSon1
@@mrbemystar ok bud
@@mrbemystar I mean, there is a free demo you can try if you want to see why its actually bad. It's a failure of a game in itself without getting into the politics of it.
I echo this sentiment. This video has piqued my interest. My curiosity is too strong.
I'm sorry, I've watched a whole playthrough of this game on multiple channels (including channels that are objectively not right wing, like YMS) and it absolutely as bad as everyone's saying. If an alt-right hardcore extremist wanted to make a parody of modern progressivism, they'd be more subtle than this game. The game is unintentionally hilarious - it's 2024's Ride To Hell. Sometimes you have to call something for what it is.. and I consistently fight most of those channels whenever they absolutely slander the bejesus out of Alan Wake 2 for absolutely ridiculous reasons that aren't true at all.
This was the only positive review but I'll give it a chance hope I don't regret it
Thankfully there’s a free demo
You have an entire section on "Shared Blame?" where your only criticism is that the devs didn't fight back against the "hate" hard enough without mentioning the gaming media deciding that this game was basically the second coming of gay black jesus. If the best thing you can say about the game is that the trailer was sh*t and games journalists decided to fight the culture war on behalf of the devs, then game may not deserve to fail but it was absolutely going to. Really tho, the fact that the game is filled with left wing buzz words and there is no exploration of how those words are used in language policing and censorship, tactics of the modern left, indicated that the devs are at least highly biased if not completely in on it.
My point of the Shared Blame section was to point out that both the developer and publisher ceased any post-launch promotion of the game.
Even if they didn't want to try and "fight back", going totally silent like they have is just making them look like they don't believe in supporting their own work.
From what I've seen of the game, 3 things and not even talking about the politics.
1. Game graphics reminds me of an early 2000s game demo I played, which sucked. I dislike the overall graphic design in general. I know you liked it, but sorry, it looked bad to me.
2. Combat, its a joke. A two year old with a controller mashing random buttons can win these.
3. The song gameplay, again, a joke. Poorly designed to begin with and do you even have to play this to continue the "game"?
Eight years, millions of dollars and for what? So we can pay $30 for a fancy, animated, choose your own adventure, graphic novel.
Dustborn is what is wrong with the gaming industry. We're told to be happy to get this game, a poorly designed and laid out game. We want good games, we need to start demanding it and stop putting up with crap like this.
When I worked in a computer game store 25 years ago, a game like this would have been laughed out of the store before we ever noticed the politics of it.
This isn't a top tier game, its B level at best.
More games come out every single day than anyone could ever have time to play. 25 years ago was a completely different era of technology. I don’t see why anyone would take offense to a game they don’t like, there are a near infinite number of other games to think about instead.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Yeah, 25 years is a long time, and this game appears to have gone backwards.
@@HiddenMachineGamingBecause there's only so much money and dev power to go around in the industry, and games like this can influence said industry to put out more content like it over actual good games from great devs.
Focusing on this for a few weeks and making sure the game industry hears people when they say "we do NOT want this becoming mainstream EVER" is the least that can be done to make sure mediocrity doesn't spread.
@@MoonlitLuka a game like this was never going to be mainstream anyway, being so hung up on it just seems petty to me.
@@HiddenMachineGaming The problems within the game are already a continuation of mainstream problems, though. It's just more of political themes with plenty of potential being failed by extremely unsubtle, uncreative, and poor execution.
While this game itself was never going to be mainstream, it had the misfortune of being a seemingly perfect representation of exactly what's wrong with modern gaming and media at a time where other games that kinda embodied the same issues were becoming MASSIVE financial failures.
Now, is this game the source for all those already existing problems? No. But, the critiques aren't saying it is. It's just gamers capitalizing on the best possible chance to use examples of recent gaming failures to tell studios that this mediocrity is NOT what they want and to stop pushing this stuff in the mainstream.
The hope is that companies get the message. Get it right by being thoughtful, creative, and interesting with it or don't bother at all and step out of the way so another game idea can get the funding and resources it needs to excel.
Most of the comments I see of people saying this game isn't that bad also immediately say it's not their type of game. The bottom line is there just isn't a market for this game. The "modern audience" that many developers have been targeting is very small. On top of that don't buy and support the games anyway. At the end of the day people want and buy good games. You don't get to decide if your game is good or not, the free market does. All the political talk for or against things like this don't really matter in the end.
I think the game was always going to be a niche experience. There is a market for the game, it’s just a small one, which is totally fine by me. I play dozens of games on Steam and itch.io that seem to be played by only a small handful of other people, and many of those games also received grant funding and/or have political messaging. The situation is super common, but it’s always weird to me when a game like this becomes such a high profile target for insults and criticism from people who have never and would never play it, especially when countless similar games are released every day that go unnoticed.
Saying the character interaction reminds you of Balder's Gate 3 is pretty understandable but here's the thing:
Balder's Gate 3 doesn't spell outloud the character gender identity as much as Dustborn. This is one character issue that Dustborn and the late Concord have, I don't need the game to tell me that Noam is none-binery, I can see that from the way their character act and look like, having it getting yelled out from the game is unnecessary really.
That’s fair, Dustborn is a bit on the nose sometimes
In this game you are playing as the actual evil final boss 🤣
just because you think you are "fair" toward this game does not mean everyone bashing this game is grifter and "kids".
the dev literally advertise this game as a way to "fight the bigot gamer"
I’ve hardly seen the devs advertise the game at all, but I haven’t seen anyone else on UA-cam review or cover the game without intentionally misrepresenting it, and I’ve only seen one reviewer actually playthrough the game. Not everyone who bashes it is a grifter, but almost all of them are bashing the game based on rumor and second hand opinions rather than their own first hand experience playing the game.
@@HiddenMachineGaming have you even seem the dev interview?
also “almost all of them” are based on rumor and second hand opinion? dude most of the player also bashing this game. you don’t have to eat shit to know it smell
@@lukuanhsien He is just lying obviously.
The game arrived during "peak anti-woke season" in the gaming world. They have certainly been living under a rock when being surprised by the backlash. The harassment part of is probably not possible to even imagine. It's just how things turned out in 2024 and there's not much we can do about it right now (unless magic wands exists). It's going to be a thing for the foreseeable future to some degree I suspect. It's hard to say how much power this movement has, but it's certainly not zero. It's all about perception. The actual content of the game is not relevant.
You can't blame the devs. They went from mediocre games bringing in low 5 digit sales to an upfront high 6-7 digit DEI cash injection to make ideological material. Whatever puts better food on the table during terrible economies wins.
bro the devs are from Norway and they made this shit in 8 years, they do not deserve to be able to put food on the table if this is what they bring to gaming.
@@angel_of_rust 100% they don't deserve our money but the pockets of DEI are deep and mediocre developers view it as a godsend to take that route. weird take but, Dustborn existing is a good thing , a game that forever bookmarks their ideology in gaming
Gonna purchase this just because of your review!
Sweet! Glad you checked it out!
Also look for the Spill mot draug og Trump from dagsavisen
To me the true hero of the game is the one eyed red headed woman who keeps trying to desperately convince her fellow camp members (who are peddling OPIUM, mind you - and we're supposed to be on their side) that the main characters are messing with their heads and manipulating them. They frame her as the villain and wrong, while she's literally calling out what you're doing to everyone. The characters are terrible, terrible people and including powers like "Cancel" and "Normalize" are the most insane unintentional self-parody I've ever seen in my life.
That woman has ghosts in her head controlling her, did you miss that part?
@@HiddenMachineGaming Apparently the ghosts let her see the truth, that the main character are a bunch of manipulative liars who's entire powerset is gaslighting people.
@@HiddenMachineGaming No offense but it doesn't change much in this lol
Play a better adventure game, like Unavowed or the black well series.
Okay
Thank you for the intro. I have met a like minded individual. This is refreshing.
Glad to hear it!
This game honestly isn't what those incendiary game reviewer/podcasters are saying it is. This game is a condescending mess for all involved and it seems to be a cringe representation of an allegorical story. These kind of game developers always lose their main focus of motive during the application of such stories. Its like "Heres a story in a game that relates to real life, by using a hyper sensationalist narrative to explain our points." Its condescending and contrary to what their ethics allegedly represent.
Fair!
2:42 Was that SFX a pun?
It was not real, my beloved Dice photo is totally safe
@@HiddenMachineGaming That's great. But what I meant was, the sound effect is of ceramic breaking, not glass. You know, ceramic, made of of clay. Clay. I'm gonna leave now.
Great video btw. A level-headed take is always welcome.
@@kosmoplod hahahaha that went over my head, I wish I had been that clever. Thank you!
Personally, I feel like this game was made with a very single minded veiw that leaves very little room with empathy for each side of the argument. The devs wanted to shame, which is honestly the worst way to communicate your views with someone. Why would people listen to what you say if you insult them?
Its not like games haven't tackled politics successfully before. Look at metal gear and disco elysium! Both are heavily political but not once dose it feel outright hateful to one side. Each side, or political stance is explained and critizied equally, allowing the player to make their own informed choices.
Take the dock workers from disco elysium for example. The game shows you the veiws of both the strickers, 'scabs' and even the boss of the docks. You may not agree with their stance, but you can empathise with why they think like that. Nothing is black or white, very much like real life. Its comforting in a weird way.
Dustborn on the other hand is simply "This is the only way and if you disagree even a smidge you are AWFUL"
Politics should never be "im right and anyone that disagrees is wrong." as when that communication breaks down, we can't understand each other. Poltics without empathy is dangerous.
Concord is closing down on 6 September 😂 everyone gets a refund from sony 😂
They've taken the game off the shelves at game 😂
Game won't like giving out a refund for concord especially at game arndale centre Manchester 😂
tbh I didn't hear about Concord until the refund announcement
I don’t have an hour to watch this today, but hearing that you liked it makes me happy. I don’t like it. In fact, I put it on ignore on steam, but it’s at least nice to have at least a few people like bad games.
yeah, i'd buy this
seems like my kinda shit
i imagine there was so much backlash that people prioritized their mental health
The complaints about getting money from grants I also don't understand. It's pretty standard stuff and most media projects apply for funding. Some of them do weight projects with diverse casts but that's just a small part of it. The most important part is to have the competence/trust to actually deliver as far as I know. or .. maybe even more important is what the fund decides to prioritize.
Great video.
14:00 is where I realized this was not a good faith critique. You’re really threading the needle here, because you yourself saw a market opportunity for a contrarian variety of grifting
I feel like people are really misunderstanding me there. I am just trying to communicate that the US election was not the sole inspiration for the game. The quote from the dev mentions summer of 2016, which was when the Brexit vote happened, not the US elections. The quote goes on to mention a series of events, which I’m sure did include the election of Trump, but in that four year period we had so many other big political events, including a global pandemic.
I think the real problem with games like this, as evidenced by the initial reactions, is that most people are just not interested in these types of games. Most gamers just want to have a fun and enjoyable experience rather than be inundated with social commentary. Even the appearance of a game having political leanings of any kind is a big red flag for a lot of people. I enjoyed your measured commentary on this game but I think it was a mistake to spend time discussing the extreme reactions of right leaning gaming critics. On the other side of the coin, left leaning game critics would praise it for reasons other than the quality of the game. At the end of the day I don't think their opinions alone would have made this game a success or failure. I just don't believe a sizable enough audience exists for this particular type of game. While there might be a lot of loud voices on both sides I think the word that describes most peoples attitude toward this game would be - indifferent.
I hear you; I think a lot of people are likely to be indifferent about this one.
I expected more people on the left to champion the game but left leaning game critics have been pretty quiet about this one, and the negative comments started before anyone even had a chance to play the game or know much about it.
When I hear that there isn't an audience for "games like this", I have a mixed reaction. Having completed the game, I can confirm that it does not inundate players with social commentary. That's a part of it, for sure, but it's a part of so many other games as well.
I think that what sets this game apart is that the protagonists are minorities. People were calling it SJW garbage literally seconds into the first teaser trailer premiering on the Future Games livestream.
People looked at the characters in Dustborn, and just assumed that it would be a game that was constantly preaching at them instead of telling a worthwhile story. That sucks, because the story and lore in the game are really cool (in my opinion).
No one complains about Fallout, Wasteland, Final Fantasy 7, killer7, Metal Gear Solid, Papers Please, Spec Ops: The Line, Max Payne 3, or even Skyrim for having strong social and political messages. There are so many games that are aggressively political and are still very successful, so when I hear that players just want to have fun and not get into all of the social and political stuff, I kind of question how legit that viewpoint is.
@@HiddenMachineGaming I think you might be overlooking the importance that appearance plays in people's reaction to something like this. I don't just mean the character designs or the graphical style either. Look at Hi-Fi Rush for instance, similar look, similar gameplay elements, a diverse cast of characters, and a focus on music and rhythm melded into the gameplay. And yet, two completely different reactions to those games. So why do people look at one of these games and say "Hey, that looks really cool!" and to the other they say "Meh, no thanks."? Even if it is as you say that Dustborn doesn't inundate players with social commentary I think you'd have to admit that it LOOKS like it does.
Of the games you've listed, the ones I've played I do not associate with social or political messaging. It's important to distinguish between a story that contains a social or political element versus a story that contains a social or political message. Metal Gear Solid is a great example. While it would be easy to say that the game is merely a commentary against nuclear war (a sentiment I believe most people would share), this is not what Kojima was trying to convey. The real takeaway from the game is an appreciation of life, of not being ruled by your past, a universal theme that nearly everyone can relate to.
One only needs to look at the history of popular games through the decades to see what gamers gravitate towards and it's not games that have strong political leanings one way or the other.
@@traditionaljeffery7800 good points! In the same sense that MGS has a much deeper message, I think Dustborn does too. However, you're totally right, the immediate appearance of the game looks to me like it would be some kind of flimsy SJW propaganda piece.
Even with the politics removed, this game would definitely not be a massive success, but I do believe that many potential fans have been turned off due to the way it has been presented. I also think that some potential fans are just in the dark on the game due to the fact that advertising/marketing efforts seem to have stopped due to the studio being overwhelmed by trolls.
Since posting this I've received messages from people who gave the game a shot after seeing it from a different perspective. For the sake of the studio and everyone there, I hope that it can find enough of an audience to keep them making games, they have plenty of other solid titles out there and likely have more good work left in them.
@@HiddenMachineGaming that's because aside from vocal minorities, most people don't make politics their personality. All of the games you mentioned are well written, unlike this one. The last time I saw a piece of media that failed so catastrophically in every single aspect was High Guardian Spice, which, like this game, flopped to the point that I'm pretty sure reviewers made way more money than the people who made these things. Also, this game is actually pretty racist. The characters are borderline offensive stereotypes, and the fact you can 'cancel' white characters as an Angry Black Woman(TM) almost feels like they're taking the piss.
Also, the nonbinary character's main power is gaslighting, which... lol.
Balding, short, middle aged white guy with a beard 😂😂😂😂
You are 100% the type of person I'd expect to enjoy this gayme 😂😂😂😂
51:00 That music feels more synth-pop, really.
Tho i agree sidescrollers kinda cringe because everytime they talk about it it’s really a bloated “this is shit” kind of commentary. Worst they use the same screenshots and clips like damn.
I checked out their most recent episode where they break the news about Concord. They bring up a Forbes article about how much the game had earned and go on to say that Forbes is trying to push a false narrative about the game being successful. They say that Forbes covers for woke games all the time.
I looked up the article, and it's about how Concord was a total financial failure. The SideScrollers crew just looked at the headline and called it fake news, even though the article was actually supporting their stance on the game.
That show be entertaining, but it has no credibility to me.
Your superpower in this game is being a garbage person........
Not totally inaccurate
Why would anyone pander to this audience if they don't buy and play video games?
Because its not about making money, the companies behind this are literally worth trillions. Money is an afterthought, but being able to shape society as they see fit is the closest description to being Gods, that's ultimately what it is all about. Having power to shape society as they see fit.
You sound paranoid. It’s a small studio that employs 15 people, they are not worth trillions. They got a minor publishing deal with a subsidiary of Quantic Dream and still needed to supplement that budget with grant money. There are no trillions behind this game.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Only the paranoid survive is a book you should consider taking a look at, but addresing your point. You are correct, it'd be incredibly silly to believe a 15 person studio is behind this.
Its not, it is the trillion dollar worth hedge funds such as Blackrock, Vanguard and Dfinity, whose expertise, connections and ability to provide services allows them to get roles as viziers or advisors to many goverments, which is the way the influence power over countries without needing to have their ideas voted on. As always, mascaring as humanist altruism.
This is how these companies manage to conquer and subdue different sectors, from the top to the bottom, but always starting and ending on finances. This is exactly how gaming, the music and film industry has been subdued, grants. ''We will give you ''x'' amount of money provided you follow ''y'' requirements''
Such requirements are ESG. Which does include adding the whole agenda of diversity and inclusion you've been seeing everywhere.
It's pretty simple, if you bow the knee to their agenda they'll offer incredibly good rate loans, which logic would dictate businesses trying to turn a profit will take (Specially if they are unaware of the political agenda, or simply do not care due to greed).
You cannot sit here, and tell me this giant push for Woke agendas is organic, specially with how widespread it is across our entire culture, and how badly received it is every single time.
I am not paranoid. I can see where the sand is shifting.
@@MadSaurax Majority of people are progressive, it's the reason that conservatives haven't won the popular vote since 2004.
Blackrock has made polls, majority of people want their investements to go to companies with good environmental, social and governance rankings.
They aren't here to play gods, with other people's money, they are here to make money, and one thing you "jews are destroying the west" people keep missing is that governance is part of the rankings, that part is about how self governing/sustaining, a woke company is a failing company would have a low esg score, this, in the logic that you people lay out, let me ask you two things rhetorically, how big is the S score of a "woke" company and what is the S score of nestlé.
Ubisoft, the company that's been dragged through the mud recently for being unapologetically woke, as a S score of 62(that's pretty bad), in comparison, nintendo has a S score of 80, maybe there are woke games that they made that I am not aware of.
And Nestlé, a company where the social controversies are a big chunk of their wikipedia page, as a S score of 95, bruh, child labour and slavery make an appearance, if this isn't a clear sign that ESG scores are an afterthought so that the people that trust them with money feel good about themselves then idk what is, they have a high S score because this isn't about actual representation, this is about questions like "do you employ women/yes, no or null", how many black lesbian are there in nintendo games for their S score to be HIGHER than ubisoft?
The thought that putting a lesbian in your product means blackrock will give you free money is maniacal, they exist to make money, doing so by investing it, money that isn't theirs, in your mind, people give blackrock money to invest, they put it into a failling business that has an agenda of diversity and inclusion, they lose my money.... profit(?), but at least they feel like gods.
The reason blackrock is managing over 9 trillion in assets isn't because they throw it away to feel good, trust me.
The push for woke agenda is organic, it came free with your woke society, people celebrated the first woman astronaut because it's an achivement even though we already had a man in space, diversity and inclusion makes the majority of society feel good, you can say "go woke go broke" until the cows come home, but when baldur's gate 3, hades or red dead redenotion 2 pull up you start making excuses as to why having a trans black disabled lesbian take the forefront of your screen isn't woke, people are more connected than ever and everyone wants to have an opinion on everything even when they have no understanding of it, I mean come on, the people that made this game match what you see on screen, they are diverse, but you don't even think they made it, scratch the paranoid allegations you are schizophrenic.
You're seeing a huge push for diversity because the creators think it's important, because they are leftists, that's why, even in a private company that blackrock can't get their hands on, you see a push for diversity and inclusion, and no, the government funding that they got by the politians that were corrupted by the hedge funds would be enough to make the game.
And the push for woke agendas isn't new, it just gets renamed every couple years, first it was woman, then it was non-whites, it's just that society has gotten more progressive over time, people have been pushing for this since before I can remember, maybe it started with civil rights, probably before tho.
Scores were seen in knowesg .com
If you want to talk more I think that the definition of woke needs to be established because I more often than not see it as "non-white, non-cisgender, disabled, left leaning anything on my screen"
And when did the push for woke agendas start?
@HiddenMachineGaming its still a major failure that anyone could see from a mile away. It is still a business after all
I think it's disingenuous to try to say the game was not influenced by the 2016 election based on the article you show in the vid, especially considering the article is from 2020 and Trump's presidential term would still be ongoing at the time, and they are referencing an ongoing situation that started in 2016. I mean come on.
Like I said, that was likely part of it, but there was so much going on politically and socially around the world during that time that I don’t think it was the sole inspiration. We were a good ways into the pandemic at that point.
@@HiddenMachineGaming Right, and there was also the country wide George Floyd protests - but neither the pandemic nor the protests began in 2016. And if we are talking about the overton window shifting to the right prior to the election, that's something that had been brewing for a few years leading up to 2016. So if we are looking to a series of events that started in 2016 I think it's pretty safe to say they are referring to the election of Trump as the first domino in the chain to fall.
(Edit: Additionally, both the mishandling of Covid and the nationwide division and violence during the protests can directly be attributed to Trump's policies/rhetoric, so in 2020 that would be considered an ongoing series of events that started in 2016.)
@@무군 totally. I didn't mean for it to come off like the election wasn't a major tipping point, I just meant to express that it was one of many things that inspired the team.
Focusing on the election alone spins it into more of a political binary thing, when the game really is about issues that transcend party politics.
It’s also completely mental to assume a Norwegian game development studio deeply cares about the particular US political party and is not just using the US setting to talk about societal issues that are prevalent all over the globe.
@@sasha_chudesnov I dunno man, the norwegian game development studio used Norwegian tax payer's money to fund a game about American politics, painting America as a dystopia. Especially, when the common left rhetoric during that time is that Trump will turn America to a dystopia. Seems pretty on the nose to me.
my only counterpoint to the enlightened centrism thing is just like... yeah, most politicians are bad/out for their own profit and not doing enough to make your life better, but that's still not a good reason to be ambivalent to which side is better. Because one side is objectively doing more than the other to make your life better. Only one side supports workers rights at all, or social services, or regulations to prevent price gouging - and it ain't the conservatives.
Centrists will look at both sides and say both are bad and they don't want to engage with it. Meanwhile the Leftists are like "lol, we're just kinda cringe sometimes, and some of our representatives are closely linked to corporations so that everything stays as the status quo or gives a bit more to businesses" and the Conservatives are like "Every single one of our reps is completely beholden to corporate donors and we will do literally everything they say and we have a plan to literally overthrow democracy, strip away all human rights and eliminate every social support structure and regulation in the country and the less people who vote, the better our chances at being elected." And the Centrists will look at these options and go "I can't tell any difference between the two."
I hear you. I am not Centrist, and I can definitely tell the difference between the two parties. I just don't really care to engage with party politics in any kind of public way and don't plan to actively endorse any particular candidate.
My views are a lot more nuanced than I could communicate in a UA-cam video, but even the politicians who make my life better still perpetuate a lot of stuff I can't condone, especially when it comes to foreign policies and protecting things like the industrial prison complex and the permanent war economy.
The problem is NEITHER side is better and if you say otherwise, you're very blatantly on one of the sides. It's like going "I don't want to support Hitler or Stalin! They're both evil!", then someone comes along and goes "But one side is clearly worse than the other!", and that person is clearly a Nazi or a Communist. They will try to convince you they're the lesser of two evils, but being the lesser of two evils still makes you evil. How can good triumph if it's helping evil?
And hey, you know what happens when you say both sides are bad to a right-winger? They'll go "Conservatives just think you should give the unborn a chance at life, that marriage should be sacred, and that people have the right to defend themselves, while the liberalists want to commit white genocide and groom all our children for their degenerate harems, and they're backed by billion dollar corporates! How can anyone look at us and not tell the difference?". Because strip away all the phony morality and there is no difference. Both sides use the same tactics, love free speech only when they're not in control, play the victim when they're losing, get real smug when they're winning, say their opponents are diabolical one moment and impotent clowns the next, and most importantly, they both go "Why don't people see that MY side it the right side?" and mock people when they want nothing to do with them.
Oh, and both sides keep diddling children.
man that hoop earing is so huge you can play basket ball on that 🤣🤣🤣
The argument of having to play it to criticize it is such bs. Everyone defending a bad game uses that argument.
A critique is defined as "a detailed analysis and assessment of something." I want critiques from critics, and I don't see how they can deliver that without playing the game. Games are interactive media; you should interact with them if you want to have a credible critical take on them.
Anyone critiquing a game they haven't played is just talking. That same sort of ignorance is why grifter politicians tried to ban games like Night Trap, they were just using a game they didn't fully understand to push their own agenda.
Thanks for the breakdown. I'm gay as hell, but somehow missed hearing about this game during our monthly Gay Agenda™ meetings. I might just check it out!
Jokes aside, I sometimes pass by games with stylized art design, as sometimes it just seems like that's the best part of those games, but y'all at Hidden Machine haven't steered me wrong yet, and I've liked everything I've tried that's associated with Quantic Dream so far, so maybe I'll dip in.
If you go into it with the right attitude it can be a fun ride. My favorite parts of the Quantic Dream games are when characters get into wild and unexpected situations, and this game has plenty of that
this game and everything surrounding it kinda reminds me of YIIK
That's another game that I'd like to try for myself, all I've ever heard is that it's unredeemable
@@HiddenMachineGaming It is definitely rough and the dialogue tends to drag, but I think the story has more depth than people give credit. The writer also gets a lot of shit due to people taking him out of context and misreadings of what the game is actually trying to convey.
That's at least how I see it, but the developer is actually working on a big update, that will completely replace the old combat system with a new one and add a bunch of extra story content, so hopefully it'll help us get a better understanding of what they were going for.
@@obazu3727 I'll have to play the game once that update drops!
I love Y2K in an ironic sense lol.
to compare this game to YiiK is an insult to YiiK and I will not allow this slander
The cope is so strong with this, LOL. Nice attempt to gaslight and shill, still not buying it ^_^.
damn I thought it would work